[00:00:01] Luke: I'm Luke Storey and the sound in your ears is the Life Stylist Podcast, Episode 594. This is a bonus show and one that is deeply meaningful to me and one whose guest is no longer with us in physical form. For those of you who caught last month's AMA number 589, this show will feel especially relevant. And if you missed it, I highly recommend giving that one a listen first.

[00:00:23] Both shows are tributes to my dad, Alan Andrew Storey, who left his body on January 26th, 2025, at the age of 81 in a hospital in Naples, Florida. Thankfully, my brother Andy and I were with him in his final moments.

[00:00:38] And during the three days I spent by his side, while he remained on life support, I had a lot of time to reflect on the 54 years I spent with him, what I learned, what I cherished, and of course, to process the grief of such an unexpected and devastating loss in real time.

[00:00:53] That process is, of course, ongoing and likely will be for the rest of my life. This episode is an important part of that integration. And as I watch my dad's life unwind, I found myself reflecting on some regrets about the time I had with him.

[00:01:07] Now, thankfully, there were very few, and the ones that remained were likely more meaningful to me than they were to him. But the interview you're about to hear is my way of reconciling the biggest regret I felt, which was not featuring him as a podcast guest while he was alive, as I'd always intended. For various reasons, it just never materialized despite having nearly nine years to do it.

[00:01:30] Of the many lessons I'm learning through this experience, one of the biggest is that the time we assume we have left with our loved ones, especially our elders, is at best a rough estimate. You never truly know when someone's earthly mission will come to an end.

[00:01:43] So after returning home, I remembered that I'd actually interviewed my dad back in 2018, just two years into this podcast. The recording, however, wasn't really meant for the public. It was more of a personal archive-- his story, his legacy, a record of who he was and where he came from.

[00:02:01] At the time, I assumed, rightly so, that when he eventually moved on, those of us who loved him would appreciate the fact that I captured that moment in time. Because that's the thing about our elders. Often they're the only ones who hold the family history that came before them. So I'm really grateful that I had the intuition to preserve that.

[00:02:18] Now, that said, had I recorded a proper podcast episode with him, I definitely would've focused more on his wisdom than his life story. And due to the personal nature of some of the topics we cover in the interview, I did edit out certain segments that could have been offensive or hurtful to those still living.

[00:02:34] And my intention was, of course, to honor my father, my friend, my hero, without dishonoring anyone else. And while some of his stories and family history might not resonate with listeners who didn't know him personally, I believe that anyone who connects with the themes we often cover on the Life Stylist will find something valuable in what he shared.

[00:02:52] Much like myself, my dad spent decades dedicated to healing, growth, and transformation. So at its core, this conversation is really about change. His life was truly a testament to the fact that anyone can overcome adversity and eventually remember who they are.

[00:03:09] No matter how far any of us has drifted from God and from love, there's always an opportunity for redemption, and my dad's life was proof of that fact. So as I record this intro, some 33 days after his passing, I remain filled with gratitude, love, and reverence for the time I shared with this extraordinary man.

[00:03:28] And as anyone who's lost someone knows grief, man, it moves to its own rhythm, its own tempo. So I'm just doing my best to dance when it wants to dance and to summon the courage to keep in step when it does. So thank you to everyone listening for sharing this experience with me if you feel called to do so.

[00:03:46] Here's the general arc of the interview. We talked about his family history, parents, grandparents, all of their struggles, surviving a rough childhood and an alcoholic home, growing up in a violent oil boom town; PTSD from school bullying; when he stopped believing in God as a boy, his college years full of drinking, fighting, searching for identity; working for the Forest Service rescue and ski resorts in Aspen, Colorado, where he spent most of his life; rodeos, stock car racing, and adrenaline seeking as a way to escape his pain; surviving a helicopter crash in the Rockies; my granddad's near fatal mountain lion attack; the time we captured a wild bear cub and kept it as a pet; marrying young and the challenges of divorce, losing his best friend in a tragic plane crash; quitting drinking and the self-discovery that followed; sending me off to a cult-like boarding school for troubled youth; his struggles with physical health and how he started biohacking in the 1980s; various therapies and emotional healing practices that assisted him on his path; family tensions, loss, and the importance of making amends.

[00:04:50] He also offers some timeless and very valuable business and financial advice. And finally, how his healing journey led to finding love again and building a new life. This episode will be ad free and show notes can be found at lukestorey.com/dad.

[00:05:05] In closing, I hope this one brings comfort to those who have lost a parent and encourages those who haven't to savor the time they have left. So heal the old wounds, write any wrongs, and offer forgiveness while you still can. And even if you don't host a podcast like I do, I highly recommend recording your parents' stories in some capacity so their lives and memories don't die with them.

[00:05:26] God bless you all and God bless my dad. I miss you so much, pop. And man, I still can't believe Keith Richards outlived my old man. I always thought he was invincible, and in a way, this episode is one small way to keep a part of him alive, so enjoy the show.

[00:05:42] Okay, so what I want to do, pop, is I want to just talk to you about your life, and we'll just start out from the beginning of it. So you were born in Chicago, right?

[00:05:58] Alan: Correct.

[00:05:59] Luke: And so your mom and dad, nana and paca, or Hank and May respectively were already living in Colorado, and then he went on a business trip out there and she was with him. That's when you happened to pop out?

[00:06:15] Alan: Mm-hmm. Correct. Yeah, we didn't stay there very long. Maybe a year or six months, something like that. Then they moved back to Greeley eventually. He was working as electrical engineer in the army. He was a Signal Corps in the army. And somehow he got transferred.

[00:06:39] His dad convinced him to go to Rangely to build a power plan. This was back in 1944, '45, something like that, '46. There was no power in that community at that time. And so he moved the family over to Rangely when I was just a little kid. And none of us kids were born in Rangeley. My two sisters were born in Greeley and I was born in Chicago, but we spent our entire childhood living in Rangeley, in that area.

[00:07:12] Luke: And who were Hank's parents?

[00:07:15] Alan: Hank's parents', his dad's name was Luke, and his mother's name was Barbara. Luke was electrical. He worked for the power company in Greeley, Colorado. And he was pretty well known in that field. And I don't know much about Luke. I spent very little time with him when I was a kid.

[00:07:34] Luke: Why do you think you didn't get to spend much time with him as your grandpa?

[00:07:38] Alan: We were living on the Western slope and he's on Eastern Slope. I spent some time with his wife, with Barbara, and then she had two sisters. And the family was weird. She was a strange woman. She had a lot of weird stuff going on.

[00:08:01] She had a cabin up in Glen Haven, an old '46, I don't know what it was, a Dodge four-door car. And he'd go up to Glen Haven on the river and my dad had purchased that for her. And the two sisters were supposed to help pay the mortgage payments.

[00:08:21] Dad ended up paying for all the mortgage payments for all those years on the Glen Haven property, a little cabin around a river. And she was a little strange with things. And she was Seventh Day Adventist and she was this treasurer of the church.

[00:08:36] And I remember she would wash the dollar bills that they'd get in collection and hang them on a clothes dryer inside the house to dry them out, to cleanse the dollar bills from any sin.

[00:08:49] Luke: This is your grandma Barbara?

[00:08:51] Alan: That's my grandma Barbara. She was a real treat. And then up in the cabin where she would do, I don't know what this had to do with, but she had some sexual thing going where she would put little bells and hang them underneath the bed where anybody come and slept in the bed, if the bed moved, the bells would jingle.

[00:09:09] That was a real twisted thing too. So I really don't know what went on with her and my dad in that arena. But I know that he didn't have very much parenting and he struggled a lot with alcohol. So I only spent time with her in Greeley or maybe three or four times, I'd spend three or four days down there at her place.

[00:09:32] Never felt comfortable. Never felt comfortable with her side of the family. There was a special kids. Her daughter, Alice, married, a guy named Mark. I think he was an Indian and they lived in Moab and that's where I ran into them.

[00:09:51] And she had another daughter and she married a guy and he had two sons, Paul and-- let's see. Paul was the oldest one. They called him Punky. And then the other one was-- I can't think of his name right now, but the Paul was a special one and the other one didn't get anything. So it was a weird family situation.

[00:10:18] We went there on occasion, but it was never a comforting, loving relationship going on there. It was pretty superficial and pretty like, because you're related, you need to be together. There was not a whole lot of love there. And my grandma lived to be probably in her early 80s.

[00:10:38] And the thing I remember most about that situation was when she died, my dad and I went down to the funeral that was in Greeley, and I was probably in my 20s at that time, or late teens maybe. I remember going to the house after the funeral and his two sisters were there loading up U-Haul, plundering everything out of the house.

[00:11:06] And one of them offered my dad a tennis racket. And so they got in a big argument who's going to get the money out of the sale of the cabin out of Glen Haven. They didn't want to come to any money. My dad had been paying for it for years and years. They hadn't put a dime in.

[00:11:30] So he finally made an agreement with him. He says, "I tell you what, I'll give you the cabin, all the proceeds of the cabin in one condition." And he said, "What's the condition?" And he says, "That I never have to see you or hear from you ever again in my life."

[00:11:43] Luke: This is your dad, Hank?

[00:11:44] Alan: That's my dad, Hank. Yeah. That was the end of that relationship. I never saw my aunts and uncles again after that date.

[00:11:49] Luke: Never again.

[00:11:50] Alan: Never again.

[00:11:51] Luke: Wow.

[00:11:52] Alan: And that goes way back.

[00:11:54] Luke: And did Barbara ever try to get your dad, Hank, to go to church and be religious and all that?

[00:12:01] Alan: Yeah. She had him in the church when he was a little kid and he hated it. And I'm sure he got in some trouble. I remember one time he greased up the railroad tracks where a train was going by with grease. The train spun out and he got caught because he screwed up the train and things like that.

[00:12:24] So he acted out a little bit, but he was never close to his mother. She was more of a dependent on him and he didn't really like to be around her very much. So when he was in the Army, he vacated that whole family situation.

[00:12:36] Luke: And what nationality was Barbara?

[00:12:39] Alan: Barbara was English and something else. I'm not sure what she was. My dad was part of English and I don't know what else. I'm not sure what else. He was mostly English. Storey's an English name.

[00:12:49] Luke: Yeah.

[00:12:50] Alan: So he got out of Greeley. He married my mother in Greeley. They lived in Greeley for a while and then they moved to Rangeley, Colorado, back in 1944 when I was about a year or two old. That's when they moved to Rangeley. Maybe it was '45. It was in the early '40s anyway, and Rangeley was a boom town.

[00:13:14] It was an oil town. It was full of oil people and the ratio of men and women was about nine to one. And there were about 15 bars and about five churches. And the bars got the business. And so it was a real rough town.

[00:13:30] There was people shooting, getting shot in bars and a lot of fighting. It was a rough town. Most of my friends, their parents were alcoholics or heavy drinkers. A lot of violence, a lot of stuff went on in that town. Just crazy stuff. It was all around alcohol.

[00:13:51] And there was a lot of money flowing because it was a boom town. And I remember the first thing about Rangeley was that the main street's a mile long and there'd be big old army, four by four trucks stuck in the middle of Main Street. There was no pavement, no gravel, no nothing. Just a mud main street.

[00:14:08] And our little house we lived in, which was about 20 by 20, it was a tin house, and it was over on the west end of Rangeley. And the oil companies had built their own camps there. The Standard Oil Company built a camp. Texas Oil Company built a camp. California Oil Company built a camp to house all our employees.

[00:14:27] And there was three major camps. One was in town and two were out in the oil patch. What I remember most was very few trees there. Summers were really hot, a lot of gnats, and the winters were really cold. And so it was basically a town full of oil fuel workers and nothing to do but drink and crowds.

[00:14:54] Luke: So with Luke, Luke Storey, the former Luke Storey, your grandpa, you hardly ever saw him when you were a kid because you just didn't live nearby?

[00:15:03] Alan: Rarely. They lived in Greeley and when we lived over here, Western Slope.

[00:15:06] Luke: And what was Hank's relationship like with his dad, Luke?

[00:15:10] Alan: Not very close, but he followed Luke's direction. My dad was extremely bright in the electrical field, electrical engineer. He was extremely bright. Common sense wise, money-wise, he was extremely weak in that arena. So he knew how to build power plants and electric lines and kilowatts. He knew all of that. That was where his focus was.

[00:15:34] But I never spent time with my dad and his dad, I don't think. Maybe one time I can remember fishing up by Dylan. And that's the only time I remember ever being with my grandfather and my dad together. And they didn't communicate much. They weren't close at all.

[00:15:55] Luke: And then what about your mom May's parents? What was up with them?

[00:16:00] Alan: My mother grew up with a family of nine kids and she was about the oldest, or second oldest, and they lived on a farm. It was a vegetable farm between Greeley and Eaton, which was just north of Denver, about 60 miles.

[00:16:13] And they farmed about 160 acres. They raised carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, some hogs once in a while, sheep, some cattle. And they just pretty much were vegetable farmers. And that's what they did. And then with all those kids, they eventually left the farm with exception of Leonard. And he was the oldest boy.

[00:16:32] And then he had another brother that got killed on the farm. I think he got struck by lightning or something. My mom's closest brother was killed. And then the rest of them just split up and they left the farm. They left it to Leonard. And then Leonard was married to Bula, which was my favorite aunt, and they treated me so good.

[00:16:54] And they had a son named Jerry. He was six years older than me. And a daughter named Susan. And Jerry and Susan hardly communicated, and I didn't know Susan. I stayed there for a month and I'd never know Susan. I never got to know her living in the same house.

[00:17:09] And so Jerry and I would hunt. We had BB guns. We'd go hunt sparrows and whatever's around. We just spent all our time hunting and stuff like that, rabbit hunting and whatever. And then I helped him on the farm. I'd run tractors for him when I was about 13 when I got older.

[00:17:25] I'd go out there and start cultivating for him and help him with tractors and stuff. And I was a little bitty kid, but my uncle always liked the fact that I could run machinery. And so he lost the farm. He didn't lose the farm, but he died, I think, because of all the pesticides and herbicides they were using on the farm. I think it killed him.

[00:17:46] I think it knocked his immune system way down and he died. And he was a real kind guy. He was real sweet. And his wife, Bula, was just so attached to him. So much in love their whole life. And she loved me and she took very good care of me when I was there in the summertime.

[00:18:05] And she treated me really special, and I just really loved her. And they smoked a lot and they drink coffee in the morning and go on the farm. And Leonard just had no energy. He was always extremely tired and fatigued and I didn't know what was wrong with him. Nobody else did.

[00:18:22] But he died before she did. And then she died about four or five years later. She just gave up hope on life. She just gave up on life and just pretty much let herself deteriorate into death. And that was sad because she wrote me a letter.

[00:18:38] She wrote me a letter once, and I still have the letter to this day. And she probably wrote it to me when I was in my 20s. And she was just so sad that I grew up in the environment that I grew up in with alcoholism. And she felt so much love and care for me that she wrote me that letter and just apologized for the childhood that I had growing up in the disease of alcoholism in my family.

[00:19:02] And I kept that letter forever. I still have my thing out there. So I've got nothing but fond memories of hers. And I didn't know the other family very good. My mother's other brothers and sisters, they were really nice people. Overall, they were really nice people.

[00:19:22] My oldest uncle just died. He was a World War II veteran Iwo Jima. My other uncle Perk was in Iwo Jima and Okinawa. And they saw a lot of terrible things they never talk about. I couldn't get them to talk about the war. And they're all dead now. My whole family is dead on that end. My mom died about two years ago, 99.

[00:19:43] So that family's dead. But there was quite a bit of dysfunction in family and there still is today. Nobody in that family talked about alcoholism or drug addiction, even though the offspring now are dying from it. My cousin's daughter just hung herself about six months ago. She was in college and hung herself, committed suicide.

[00:20:08] But nobody talks about the drinking and alcoholism and stuff that went on in our family. It was this family secret. It still is today. Because I talk about it and I bring it up. They don't like to talk to me about that because I've been through a lot of recovery my whole life and I'm pretty tuned into what recovery is and what alcoholism is and what drug abuse is. So I'm pretty knowledgeable in that arena. And I've studied it. And I've been in AA for, I don't know, 10 years.

[00:20:42] Luke: And what about May's parents specifically? Did you spend any time with them and what were they like?

[00:20:45] Alan: May's parents, my wife's parents?

[00:20:49] Luke: No, no, your mom, May.

[00:20:49] Alan: Oh, my mom, May.

[00:20:51]Luke: Nana's parents.

[00:20:52] Alan: Oh, nana's parents. Her mother was Swede. They were Swedish. She was sweet, real sweet woman. Really hardworking, taking care of all those kids. She worked really hard. I never knew my granddad. I never saw him around. I'd had no relationship with him whatsoever. But she was one of the kindest people I've ever known. She was extremely kind.

[00:21:18] Luke: And what was her name?

[00:21:19] Alan: Holder Carlson. And she's buried. I went to her funeral. I was actually with her on her bedside when she died. She had pneumonia and she died. And I was there when she died. And then went to her funeral and stuff. But my mom is now buried in the same plot as her mother.

[00:21:37] Luke: Where is that?

[00:21:19] Alan: That's in Eaton, Colorado, in the family cemetery outside Eaton. It's called Lucerne. It's where all the farmers are buried. They're buried in this one little cemetery there. It's called Eaton Cemetery.

[00:21:49] Luke: Who else was in the room when Hilda died other than you?

[00:21:53] Alan: My mom was there and I believe my dad was there. I'm not sure if my sisters were there, but I remember what it was. It was in Greeley and I remember that she had the death rattle. The phlegm was going up into her vocal cords and everything. And she just passed away. We went to the funeral and I don't remember much about the funeral. I was a little kid then. I was pretty young, probably about 6, 7, 8 years old.

[00:22:22] Luke: Do you remember anything supernatural about the moment that she died?

[00:22:56] Alan: No, I don't. I don't remember much about that. I just remember that she passed. And I remember I was sad, and we all cried. She was just a sweet woman to me. She was very affectionate to me and very nice.  Just always took good care of me and fed me and just really took good care of me.

[00:22:52] Luke: Have you ever seen another person die in person throughout your life?

[00:22:48] Alan: Yeah. Yeah, I've seen people die.

[00:22:52] Luke: What other people did you see die?

[00:23:06] Alan: I was working in Aspen on the Forest Service when I was about 21 years old. I was a fire guard. We got a call that afternoon. I was in charge of some of the rescue and I got a call in the afternoon. There was a man that tried to climb South Maroon Peak and he went up too late in the afternoon and he came, started coming down and he got in too big of a hurry and he slid down this ice field into a pile of boulders.

[00:23:23] And actually, he died that night before we got to him the next morning. I spent the whole night on a snow field on about a 45% grade. I beat a little 12 by 12 foot square platform in the snow field to stand on at night, and I walked all night long and it was spit in snow. Another guy there was Dave Hitter with me.

[00:23:47] He worked for the Forest Service. He's about my age. I must have been 21, 22 years old. And we got up to him the next day and had a stoke slate and we got him off the rock pile and took him down, lowered him down the snow field belaying him section by section. I fought him and got him down the bottom.

[00:24:05] We put him over a horse and I tied his hands and feet to the stirrups and I put a tarp of ream and I let him out through the campground into an ambulance in a coroner, which took him into town. He didn't actually die when I was there, but about a year later, there was four mountain climbers on the backside of Maroon Bells.

[00:24:24] And I was working for the Forest Service and I had a Tote Gote. And Michael Penfield was my district ranger. He asked me if I'd go up Snowmass Creek, it's a wilderness area on my Tote Gote goat and try to help these guys out. He had a SOS call, and I was going up Snowmass Creek in my Tote Gote, and I saw this big light coming down and it was middle of the night.

[00:24:46] This big light came down. I didn't know what it was. And I looked over there across the creek and there was a helicopter landed. So I waited the creek and went over there, and he didn't know where he was. So he picked me up, says, "Do you know where the Maroon Bells are?" And I said, lost me to basin, "Yeah, I know exactly where it is."

[00:25:02] And he says, "I'm going to take you up there." So he picked me up in the helicopter and we flew up there and we landed on a side hill about 200 yards away from the snow field. And what had happened, these four guys were tied together at the very top and one of them fell and drag the rest of them down.

[00:25:18] And one of them got hooked in a crevice and he got stuck in a crevice. And the other guys were holding on. They were laying on a steep snow field. And there was a guy in camp, one of the guys in camps looked up there and he saw him and he went up there and he cut the three guys loose from the one guy that was still alive and they tumbled to their death at the bottom all tied together.

[00:25:44] And when I got up there, the helicopter picked up a guy named Bugsy Barnard. He was a doctor in town. He had a bunch of morphine on him. And so I had an ice axe and I had good hiking boots and stuff. And we started taking that stokes litter up little by little up the slope.

[00:26:03] And we got to the guy and he was still alive, but he was incoherent, moaning and stuff. And his head was real big. He'd been beat through rocks. You couldn't recognize him. You had no idea who he really looked like. So he got him in the stoked lever and we started taking him down the slope, belaying him 50 feet at a time.

[00:26:22] We'd belay him 50 feet at a time with our ice axe stuck into the snow and using that to take the rope around to belay the stokes later. And finally about halfway down, he quit breathing. He just died right there. And that was it. Bugsy just died. Had given him morphine and everything else, but he croaked right there.

[00:26:40] And then we took him down and got in the helicopter, put him on the helicopter, and he flew him into Aspen. And they flew the other guys into Aspen too. So there was four guys that were dead there that they flew into Aspen, and I was on that rescue there. And there's only three of us on the rescue-- Bugsy Barnard, the helicopter pilot, and myself. Get those guys down off there, and there's nothing we could do to save them.

[00:27:03] They were about 1,000-foot drop in vertical feet from the top of there to the bottom, and they rolled and tumbled through rock fields and all kinds of stuff. And we were lucky none of us got hurt getting them down out of there. So those are the ones I remember the most that died.

[00:27:20] Oh, another one I saw die was I was working at the Forest Service and they had Maroon Creek campground and they had paved road through it and had these huge, big, tall evergreen trees that the trunks were three or four feet in diameter. And I was up there with Tom Hartley right there looking to go fishing.

[00:27:36] And we drove around. I saw where this tree had broken off and had lit right over the top of a car. I says, "Wow, can you believe that? I don't remember ever seeing that before." So we walked over to the car and there were two women in the front seat. They were crunched down. The tree had fallen right over the driver's seat, and it broke their necks and they were laying there dead right in the front seat.

[00:27:57] I couldn't believe it. I reached in there and felt their pulse and there was no pulse. So I called the ambulance. I had a radio at that time. I called the ambulance from Aspen and it came up there and the sheriff came up there and they got them out. And they were dead, of course, and took them down to the coroner's office.

[00:28:21] But that tree, the wind had come up and just snapped that tree off and it fell straight down. It couldn't have been more direct hit on top of the cab where they were sleeping, where they were in the cab. They hadn't got out of the car yet to go to the campground. They hadn't even gotten out.

[00:28:29] Tree just snapped down. Pretty poor timing. Just bam, right on top of the cab. That killed them instantly. They were still warm. We just got there 30 seconds after that happened. It's pretty amazing.

[00:28:42] Luke: I want to go back to your mom's parents. So Hilda, you liked, had a good relationship with her. You were there when she died. And then what about your mom's dad? What was his story?

[00:28:56] Alan: He was really invested in the irrigation company in that area with bringing irrigation water out of the mountains over to Greeley in that area. He was the head of the irrigation company. And I don't know much about him. I don't know hardly anything about that guy. I don't remember ever seeing him.

[00:29:15] Luke: What was his name?

[00:29:16] Alan: Oh gosh. His name was Charles.

[00:29:19] Luke: Charles Carlson.

[00:29:20] Alan: Charles Carlson. Yeah.

[00:29:21] Luke: And what nationality was he?

[00:29:23] Alan: He was Swedish.

[00:29:24] Luke: Oh, they both were, huh?

[00:29:25] Alan: Yeah. Yeah, they were all Swedes.

[00:29:28] Luke: And did your mom ever relay anything to you about her childhood or how her parents treated her or their relationship?

[00:29:34] Alan: Yeah. There were so many kids she had to take over the mothering a lot of the kids. Had to take care of them. And she resented that. She grew up earlier than her time. She was responsible for all those other kids that were smaller. And so she was busy, stuck in the ranch at the farm out there taking care of kids and changing diapers and feeding them and doing all that stuff.

[00:29:58] So she really never had much of a childhood. She finally got away and went up to Yellowstone National Park and worked one summer and she had freedom and she went up to my Aunt Alice and they changed beds and they did all kinds of stuff there for the resort, and that was really a fun time for her. She got away from the family and got up there and got on her own.

[00:30:19] Luke: And then when you were a kid living in Rangeley, what was it like with your parents?

[00:30:26] Alan: They both worked a lot. My dad was pretty much non-existent most of the time. Occasionally, we'd get together, but most of the time mom worked too. They had an office in town where they sold electrical appliances and things like that, and they had my dad's construction.

[00:30:44] First of all, when I first went to Rangeley, dad worked at the power company, but first little house was next to the Mormon church and it was probably about a 20 by 20 10 building. We all crammed into that one. And we lived there for a little while. We lived in Leach Apartments, which was about two blocks from there. We lived in apartments later on.

[00:31:03] Then we went down and moved across the river into a house down there next to the power plant where we stayed for a couple years. We were building a power plant. And we lived in that house there, and that was away from nowhere. That was next to the river.

[00:31:16] And then from then, let's see, we moved from there out. My dad bought a ranch three miles out of town below the cemetery, 360 acres. And then we moved out there when I was probably 11 or something like that, 10 or 11. But most of my time was right around living in different parts of the town and the community. And we all lived in that.

[00:31:38] Luke: And was your dad's drinking apparent to you as an issue when you were a kid?

[00:31:45] Alan: Yeah.

[00:31:45] Luke: Was he running around drunk and not coming home and all that kind of stuff?

[00:31:50] Alan: He drank a lot. He drank every day when he came home. What I remember, he always said, "Hear the ice tinkling in the glass." So he was drinking. And I remember later on his alcoholism worsened. They had a rodeo in town and he was this treasurer and he was driving home from the rodeo and he came down our hill and he ran over a cattle guard and rolled the vehicle.

[00:32:14] He was drunk and threw all the shit out of the vehicle, the money and everything, and end up in the hospital. And so he had some pretty good drinking episodes. I remember him coming home from getting in a fight in town with a guy that owned the Chevrolet dealership. He was all bloody. And so it was just one of those things.

[00:32:31] And they'd go in town, the headquarters, and drink and party and smoke. And that was there. And us kids would be by ourselves a lot. We'd be a lot by ourselves and they'd be doing stuff. That's what I remember. And then he'd come home drunk and there'd be a lot of screaming and fighting and my mom be screaming and glass breaking and just a lot of that.

[00:32:05] So I remember most of my life growing up, what I really know now today is I had no boundaries. I did whatever I wanted to do because nobody around. They were pretty much vacated. Jula, in my opinion, was a lost child. I was a hero. I could do no wrong.

[00:33:05] And Carla, she was a scapegoat. She couldn't do anything right. So we had that family dynamics going on my whole childhood. And living out there in the ranch was really lonely because I was a long ways away from any kids to play with. So that's where I learned how to hunt and fish. I had a mentor.

[00:33:23] Luke: Who was your mentor in hunting and fishing?

[00:33:25] Alan: Oh, his name was Robert Mobley. My dad hired him to irrigate for us and do the farming with a tractor and stuff like that, run the cows. He was about five or six years older than me. And he became my surrogate father. Everything he did, I mimicked. He was my hero.

[00:33:45] He had a Westclox watch and I had to have one. He had a tree-brand pocket knife. I had to have one. He had a brown cowboy hat. I had to have one. He walked straight without his feet going out like a duck. He walked straight. So I had to learn how to walk just like he walked.

[00:33:59] Everything he did, I was like a little puppy dog. I mimicked everything he did. And he was just a great guy to me. He taught me how to hunt, how to fish, how to tell difference between buck tracks and dough tracks. He taught me all about pheasants, all about ducks, everything. He taught me everything.

[00:34:16] Most of our time, when we're irrigating or whatever, we'd go and we'd fish between water sets along the river and fish with worms. We'd always dig in worms and putting coffee cans and go over there and sit down there. And he'd have Bull Durham in his pocket and papers.

[00:34:30] And we'd sit there and roll Bull Durham cigarettes and smoke that Bull Durham. That was pretty funny. But he was just a great guy to me. And he joined the Navy when he was about 18, I guess. And then he left and I didn't see him again for a couple years, but never forget him driving down the driveway and just the tears coming out of my eyes when he left.

[00:34:54] I was just overcome with grief because he was the closest thing I had to a relationship with a guy. He was actually more of a parent than he was a worker. I walked four miles up to his family's place to play with him and his brothers and sisters. And they were dirt poor.

[00:35:16] They had lived in a shack. They had one big coal stove in the middle of the house, just a piece of garbage house. And they were so poor, they ate chicken feet. They'd boil chicken feet and eat chicken feet. And I had a hard time eating chicken feet. And they raised their own chickens. They cut their heads off out there like they did.

[00:35:36] You don't see that happen today. And then chickens would go around in circles and fall over and croak. Then they'd dress the chickens out and we'd eat those fresh chickens. We'd eat the eggs. About everything they had was homegrown. They had their own garden. So everything they did was self-maintenance type of living.

[00:35:52] And they're very, very poor. And she was a sweet woman. She was really overweight, probably weighed 300 pounds, and her husband's named Dave, and he probably weighed 150. But they were so kind to me all the time. And I would walk four miles each way just to go visit them, each way four miles a day to go visit him. And I learned how to walk real fast.

[00:36:17] Luke: And so is he the one that taught you how to fish, and did he teach you how to use firearms for hunting and how to load guns and [Inaudible]?

[00:36:24] Alan: Yeah. I had to have a 22 just like he had. He had a Mossberg 22 to hold 18 shells with little scope on it. My dad bought me one. My dad was real good about buying me stuff. He wasn't good about spending time with me, but he was real good about buying me stuff like a gun. He knew I loved to hunt.

[00:36:42] But Robert taught me how to hunt. He taught me how everything about rabbits and things like that. We hunted a lot. I killed a lot of rabbits, and hunting was my thing, and fishing.

[00:36:52] Luke: When you were a kid and you started killing your first animals, you were shooting rabbits and stuff, did you ever feel a sense of guilt or feel sorry for them or anything like that? That the animals had died with your hand?

[00:37:04] Alan: No. They were meat to me. We ate rabbits. Just kill a rabbit. You eat a rabbit.

[00:37:13] Luke: So there no moral implication to you because it was just normal life where you lived.

[00:37:18] Alan: That's ranch life. You eat what's there. You eat your own livestock, eat your own chicken, eggs, whatever. People kill their own chickens, eat their own chickens. That was how it was. But it was rural America.

[00:37:28] Luke: It didn't gross you out cleaning a rabbit and seeing all the blood and guts, any of that?

[00:37:31] Alan: No. Uh-uh. Seeing my own blood and guts would gross me out.

[00:37:37] Luke: And then what was it like when you were in school? Because you were real small. You didn't hit your growth spat unit your late teens.

[00:37:44] Alan: Oh, that was awful for me. First four or five years of school weren't bad, then after everybody else grew and I didn't, I was 76 pounds as a junior in high school. I wrestled 76 pounds. And I was bullied a lot and I was ridiculed for being skinny and scrawny.

[00:38:03] That's all I ever heard. And I was afraid. I was real sensitive little kid. I loved everybody. I didn't want to hurt anybody. Nobody hurt me. I just loved everybody. I loved people, loved kids. And then as time went on, I got bullied and ridiculed. And over a period of time, I wouldn't sleep at night because I was afraid to go to school because I'd get bullied.

[00:38:30] And then I was afraid to go home because my home life was so radical, I was afraid to go to bed at night. So I lived in constant fear of going to school and coming home. So when I get home at night, after school, I would take my gun. I go hunting. Because I never knew what shape my dad was going to be in when he got home, if he's going to be in the booze or mean or whatever.

[00:38:52] I never knew what to expect. So yeah, I'm not going to go into detail, but I was sexually abused, emotionally abused, and physically abused as a child. And I'd go home and I'd pray at night that I'd grow. And I said, "If I grow, nobody's ever going to hurt me again." And I'd pray and I'd pray and I'd pray and I'd pray.

[00:39:12] And there was two bullies. And this was interesting because there was two bullies that bullied me in my school. And they'd bully me almost every day and I'd avoid them like a plague. But they'd get me and they'd hold me down. I couldn't breathe. They'd be two of them on top of me. And I just started to hate them.

[00:39:27] And then I started praying that they'd get killed. I said, "God, you take these guys and kill them. Would you kill them, God?" Used to pray to God that they'd die. And when we left the ranch and moved to Denver, when I was a junior in high school, I was down there in Lakewood, which I hated too. One of them got killed on the highway.

[00:39:45] He had an accident. Car run over him, killed him. And I went to his funeral and I thought, man, I'm really powerful. That prayer really works. I was pretty much into prayer by that time. And so I got to Lakewood and my first day off the school bus, I didn't know anybody in town. I'll stick with Rangeley a little bit.

[00:40:05] Rangeley, I had a sense of community there because I knew a lot of the kids in school and I had a lot of friends, but there was always two or three that were picking on me. And the rest of them I was pretty close to. I had some pretty close friends. Ironically, they all came from alcoholic families.

[00:40:22] So I blended in and I'd stay at their house, and I knew when it was time to leave because their dad had come home drunk or whatever. So basically, most of my friends were afflicted by the disease of alcoholism, and they still are today, the ones that are still alive. A lot of them died. I had classmates die from alcoholism still in high school, and they died of it. I had kids--

[00:40:49] Luke: What about the Saltine cracker defense?

[00:40:52] Alan: The Saltine cracker defense was a good one. Ride home on a school bus, and these Kenny kids were little kids. There's a whole family of them. And they tease me and call me skinny, scrawny, runt, and stork, and all these names.

[00:41:04] And finally I was eating these Saltine crackers. I had old mouthful one day, and they were bugging me and sitting behind me. I just turned around and I spit that whole mouth full of crackers on them and stuck all over their face. Oh God. That was pretty funny.

[00:41:20] It was time for me to get off the bus, of course. I didn't stay on the bus, but I got off the bus and I stood up for myself. I was pretty good there, but I was so little. So I had no any inner feelings of security or anything like that where I became afraid of other people, afraid to travel in a sports bus to another town.

[00:41:41] I was afraid I developed this real fear of people, kids especially, that they're going to beat up on me or tease me or ridicule me. So I became a loner. And one of my friends got shot in front of the Ace High Club. They never did find out or nobody ever admitted to killing him. But he was a year older than I was.

[00:42:05] And then another guy got killed in the Elk Creek Club. I started drinking at 12 and started smoking driftwood and coffee grounds and roll-your-owns. I wanted to grow up. I wanted to get big, and I didn't know what to do. And that's what I started getting into that and drinking at 12 and drank all the way through junior high and high school and smoking and drinking.

[00:42:28] I just wanted to get big. I forget, seventh grade, I went to a Hayden to a wrestling tournament and I wrestled 76 pounds and I won the tournament at that weight. And my dad was real proud of me. And then that's about the only time I remember him really being proud. No, two times he was proud of me.

[00:42:45] I was 13 years old and he took me to a trap shoot, a town trap shoot where you shot clay pigeons up a dragon. And I was 13 years old, shooting a big, heavy semi-automatic shotgun, 12 gauge, and I won a turkey. I was such a good shot, I won a turkey. I beat a lot of guys that were in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.

[00:43:06] And I won a turkey at 13. He was proud of me then. But most of the time he's just non-existent. He wasn't there in my memory. He'd be home at night. Sometimes we'd be in the bed and he'd play with me a little bit, but most of the time he was pretty much working all the time when my mom was doing the best she could with what she had, dealing with all that.

[00:43:27] So she got into prescription drugs real early in life, and then I became enmeshed with her at about 12 years old. And then that's when all that enmeshment started in my life, when I felt responsible for her for my whole life. Messed me up in relationships later on.

[00:43:48] But my older sister could never do anything right. My dad used to call her dummy, stupid and dummy. And I called her dummy about three weeks ago. Man, she got fired up. I said, "See, it sticks with you for your whole freaking life." She says, "Yeah, it does." That stays in your mind. That memory and that anger and that resentment stays with you your whole life.

[00:44:13] And this was just a few weeks ago, and she's 78. Stuck with her her whole life being abused and cut down like that as a child. And Jula was just non-existent. She stayed in the room on the other end of the house. She never left it. And I would bug her and I'd do things and go in there and ridicule her.

[00:44:33] Carla would pick on me and I'd pick on Jula as a pecking order. And we weren't close as children. Carla had her girlfriends, I had my friends, and Jula had her friends. We didn't do anything together like families do. That's what it was. Rough town, rough era.

[00:44:51] Luke: And then when did you grow?

[00:44:54] Alan: Actually, I didn't grow until I got in college. I was wrestling 105 pounds a junior in high school in Lakewood. Made the wrestling team first team. But I hated it. Hated the kids, hated the town. I was always getting bullied. My first day off the school bus some kid hit me in the mouth. I never even saw him before.

[00:45:12] I was getting abused from the time I was a little kid till I was in college. I started growing. I started growing when I was 21. I was, let's see, 18. No, I was 18 years old. I went to Fort Lewis ANM. I graduated out of Lakewood and the guys I ran around with in Lakewood for a couple years were always drinking and smoking and we were all punk kids.

[00:45:39] We were the kids that didn't fit in anywhere. I was with the car kids, the kids that had cars and smoked and drank. I didn't fit in with the football players or anybody. I just fit in with the kids that didn't fit in, like the tattoo kids today don't fit in. They fit in with tattoo kids.

[00:45:57] We wrestled 127, a freshman in college in Durango, intramural wrestling. And I had to wrestle a guy named Johnny Horton. Everybody's betting 10 to 1 that he was going to kick my ass. And I was scared to wrestle because he had such a reputation. And I wrestled him and I pinned him in less than two minutes, and that was it.

[00:46:17] Then nobody bugged me a whole lot after that. Then I started growing. And then when I started growing, by the time I got to my third college, I was growing. I was working out three hours a day, lifting weights three days a week. I weighed about 170 and I was solid as a rock and fighting a lot then and had a real-- I didn't have one chip on my shoulder. I had two chips. One for each shoulder. And I didn't take anything, and that was really bad time of my life.

[00:46:47] Luke: Why'd you go to three colleges?

[00:46:49] Alan: Well, I flunked out of the first one and then I worked for six months laying drain tile and sewer for Tom Hartley's dad behind a backhoe with a shovel all day long in the winter with snow blowing off into the ditch.

[00:47:03] And I said, "College wasn't so bad." I wised up. Then I went to Northeastern Junior College and they accepted me and I got a 3.2 the first quarter. That's between a B and an A average. I studied a little bit. So then I kept that grade point up pretty much through college. Staying in college was my freedom. I was free in college just to be who I was.

[00:47:27] Luke: And what did you study?

[00:47:28] Alan: Business, women, more women in business, partying. My whole life was focused around having fun and just getting good enough grades to get by.

[00:47:42] Luke: When you were in college and you're running around with the outcast and the kids that were into hot rods and stuff like that, were you ever into music? Were you listening to '50s rock and roll?

[00:47:52] Alan: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Elvis Presley stuff. We listened a lot of that. That was a favorite music, Elvis Presley. Let's see who else. It's been so long ago. Rock and roll.

[00:48:04] Luke: Like Jerry Lee Lewis.

[00:48:05] Alan: Jerry Lee Lewis.

[00:48:06] Luke: Chuck Berry and all that.

[00:48:07] Alan: Yeah, Chuck Berry, Fatz Domino, all that stuff. We were into all that rock and roll at that time. Yeah, I really liked that music, and I loved college. I had a lot of friends in college, and all my roommates all came from alcoholic families. Every one of them came from an alcoholic family.

[00:48:26] I don't know how that worked. It just worked that way. Then I went into Greeley and I graduated from Greeley. I was in a fraternity, but I was-- trying to think of the right word to say. I was operating out of the scope of the fraternity's bylaws, which means I was too wild.

[00:48:53] And so they got rid of me after a while. And I got in a fight with a couple of my fraternity brothers and they tried to haze me downstairs, haze me and tease us downstairs. And I had all these guys pissing this fire extinguisher, this big metal ones about that tall, about all new pledges. We all pissed in it. I pumped it up when it came down to Hayes. I just closed them down.

[00:49:18] Luke: Oh man. I've never heard that story.

[00:49:20] Alan: No, there's a few stories like that.

[00:49:22] Luke: That's a good one. Wow.

[00:49:24] Alan: And they didn't like that whole lot. They didn't come down the stairs either. So anyway, I was just a little out of bounds for fraternity life for that fraternity.

[00:49:34] Luke: And then when you left school, how long did it take for you to move up to Aspen?

[00:49:39] Alan: That next summer.

[00:49:40] Luke: Yeah?

[00:49:42] Alan: Worked up there and I was self-employed. Fred Hole and I went up there and we started doing yard work, the two of us. And we worked for eight bucks an hour or something. We worked every day. We had people over town want us because we're such hard workers.

[00:49:55] Then I got a job for the Forest Service as a fire guard. And I lived with a woman, a school teacher, downstairs in the basement named Waver Turner. And that's when I worked for the Forest Service. So when I was living with her, renting her basement out, Aspen at that time had dirt streets, hardly any people there.

[00:50:135] Real estate was cheap. It was just beginning. It was just the start of the boom on the skiing boom. And I really loved Aspen. I loved the mountains. I loved the fishing and the hunting and spent all my spare time up in the hills. Just loved it, loved it. Had a lot of fun. A lot of fun, a lot of excitement.

[00:50:36] Luke: And then when did you start working for the ski resort?

[00:50:40] Alan: First winter up there, I started running ski lift. First winter up there, the friends I worked for in the summer found me a job running a lift that winter, so I came back and I made one quarter of college and I came back up there for the winter, run a ski lift. And they asked me if I could ski. And I said, "Sure." I had the skis, slalom, and bear trap bindings. And I went up to the road to lift up halfway and the lift operator supervisor says, "Ski down to the bottom eight. Start the lift." He taught me how to do that.

[00:51:12] But an hour later, the lift still wasn't running. I'd go 50 feet and fall, blow up all my gear, be off, put my stuff on, go another 100 yards, fall. And finally, he skied down beside me. He says, "I thought you said you could ski." I never told you how good I could ski.

[00:51:29] So I finally got down there and ran the lift. It took me two hours to get down to the bottom of the lift. I was soaking wet. Oh my God. Never forget that. But I eventually learned how to ski. I did that for two winters, worked for the Forest Service two summers. I loved that Forest Service work.

[00:51:48] But I realized then that there was no future in the Forest Service because it was based on tenure, how many days you worked, how many years you had in, what your pay scale would be. And what I had was a lot of ambition to make something to myself. My self-esteem was so low growing up that what I went into was extreme approval seeking by having to outdo, outwork everybody or outfish everybody, outhike everybody.

[00:52:15] So I had this image that I had to outfight, outhike, whatever it was to make myself feel better inside. But I was always pushing the edge on everything I did, overdoing it. I'll walk a horse whatever it was. I just set my mind to it. And after the Forest Service, I realized I couldn't get anywhere outside of a GS-8.

[00:52:38] And I didn't want based on how many days I had. I want based on how good I did. So I quit working for them when I saw that there was no future for me. And I worked for the ski company as a ski patrolman for three years. And then I got in stone business.

[00:52:55] During that period of time, a guy named Danny Langford was hauling building stone. I started working with him, and then I bought him out. Then I had my own stone business. So I was basically Aspen's first fishing guide. I was taking people fishing borrowing a friend of mine's Jeep, and I'd pay him so much for the Jeep and I'd take people fishing, advertise in newspaper, and use the Forest Service telephone number as a contact. And I had my free office.

[00:53:18] Luke: Wow.

[00:53:20] Alan: So people call up looking for me to take them fishing. It took them a year to catch on, but they finally called and said, you can't keep using this for your office, taking people fishing.

[00:53:30] Luke: So you were an outfitter.

[00:53:32] Alan: Yeah, I started taking people fishing, making money.

[00:53:35] Luke: Before we move on from your early days working the chairlifts, tell us about the surprise you sent up, the lift for your buddy.

[00:53:45] Alan: Oh, that one. The one I told you about?

[00:53:47] Luke: Yeah.

[00:53:48] Alan: I was always looking for some humor, always looking for something to laugh about. So I was working at the bottom and chairlift number six, which goes up about 1,000 vertical feet. So you got lift operator at the bottom, you got lift up operator at the top to help people off, and you got a guy at the bottom helping people on. It was so fricking boring down there, just like, oh God, what time is it?

[00:54:09] So anyway, you had an outdoor toilet for people to use, and it was the middle of January, and I opened the top of that toilet up and there's about a four-foot stalagmite of shit and toilet paper frozen. So I had an axe inside the lift shack and I went in there and chopped it off and I put it in a wood box and I set it on chair number 23.

[00:54:30] And I ringed up Steve, the guy up on top. Says, "Hey, Steve, I'm sending you a gift on 23." So anyway, I wait and I wait and I wait and I wait. And pretty soon he says, "What was that?" He pulled the box up and he dropped the box. I laughed so hard I about died. That was so funny. But that was humorous.

[00:54:51] And to this day, I'll never forget, that was one of the funniest things I did up there. And then everybody knew about it because the radios from each tower go everywhere. And everybody knew about it. And they gave me a little bit of heat about doing that. They didn't think that was quite apropos for Aspen. But I thought it was apropos for me.

[00:55:10] Luke: And then when you started your entrepreneurial ambitions, then started out doing the outfitting, taking people on these guided fishing trips and stuff, how did the stone business work? Where'd you get the rocks? How'd you sell them? What are the mechanics of that?

[00:55:28] Alan: It's strictly backbreaking work. You've got to pick rocks two to six inches thick with flat sides so they can lay it on top of each other. So every rock had to be hand selected. And I would go to rock slides. Danny had a one-ton army truck with a flatbed on it.

[00:55:45] So my partner was Danny Langford, and he was into drugs and alcohol real bad. And I couldn't get him out of bed until nine o'clock in the morning. So finally I says, "Danny, I'm going to buy you out. I just want to buy you out because I don't want to be waiting two hours for you to get out of bed and go work."

[00:56:00] So I bought the truck and I knew where the rock slides were, and I did that for four or five years. I buy a bigger truck, a newer truck, and I eventually bought conveyor belts to go up rock slides so I could convey the rocks down. And that's when I was married to your mother when I had that.

[00:56:18] And I was getting 100 bucks a ton, but they're all handpicked. And you'd pick rocks that were 150 pounds up and put them on a bed, on a flatbed truck, stack them up four feet high, and they'd drive them down the mountain. Then you'd unstack them four-foot pallets so they could put fork lifts in them. And then I'd get paid for every ton of rock I sold. So it was good money. Hard ass--

[00:56:41] Luke: So contractors would buy the rocks?

[00:56:43] Alan: Yeah. Masonry contractors would buy the rocks. A lot of the rocks on the buildings in Aspen, I supplied, it's called the veneer stone, fireplace stone. I'd supplied a lot of the stone in Aspen and Snowmass, and so I handpicked and I had a crew of four or five guys working for me.

[00:56:59] We'd go up and pick up nine tons of rock out of whack, haul them downtown, come back up and stack more rock. And I just kept doing that and I was making good money, but boy, you had to pick every rock by hand and walk across the rock field and put it up on a truck gently so you didn't scar them up and just stack them on top of there till we'd have nine tons of rock. And then I'd drive out. I'd be in real remote areas like up Pearl Pass and stuff like that.

[00:57:26] Luke: Whose land was it? Was it just public land?

[00:57:28] Alan: Public lands, yeah. I'd get a permit from the Forest Service. I'd pay them like two bucks a ton, and I could go there. Eventually, I'd find slides and I'd had a dozer later on when I got in the  earth-moving business, and I'd build my rows into these rock slides so I could pull rock out of there. And I pay whoever owned the property so much a ton for the rock I'd haul out of there.

[00:57:48] Luke: Interesting.

[00:57:49] Alan: Yeah. I hauled rock for a long time. Made a lot of money hauling rock.

[00:57:52] Luke: So I remember my mom telling me at some point that you had set a goal for yourself to become a millionaire by the time you were 30.

[00:57:58] Alan: 35.

[00:57:58] Luke: Oh, 35 was the goal?

[00:58:00] Alan: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:58:00] Luke: And you managed to do that?

[00:58:01] Alan: Yeah, yeah.

[00:58:05] Luke: So how'd you meet my mom, Marthan?

[00:58:11] Alan: I met her in a bar in the cuts called the pub in Aspen, Colorado. We sit down a table and start talking. That's where I met her.

[00:58:22] Luke: And she was visiting from California.

[00:58:24] Alan: Yeah, she was moving out there visiting or something. I met her there and then dated a while and she moved in with me up on Red Mountain in the house, and then time to her to move back to California, I couldn't imagine she's going to leave, but she did.

[00:58:37] She said, "I'm going to leave." So she moved back out there, and I followed her out to California and convinced her to go to Hawaii with me. And we went to Hawaii and got married over there.

[00:58:45] She'd never experienced the dating and the dancing and the partying and all that stuff, so she still hadn't got that wild seat out of her life. And I think that was one of the main things on my side. I was working all the time. That's why our marriage didn't work. I was working all the time and she's working in the bar as a cocktail waitress. Now, chances that marriage lasting were not very good.

[00:59:07] I don't care who it is. So it just didn't last. Last long enough we had you and then eventually we had you and then she moved away to California and I lost contact with you. And I had very little contact with you from that time on. Just too painful. Just too painful to go back there. I was really hurt, devastated, and I could see my sight of it.

[00:59:31] I was so driven to make something of myself that I neglected her in a lot of ways with being around her and doing stuff with her. I was just driven to make something out of myself and not be working as a back operator at 65 years old. I wanted to work hard when I was young and take it easy when I got older.

[00:59:53] Unfortunately, that didn't work too good. I didn't have any balance in my life. All I thought you had to do to be married was provide and protect. That's the only thing. You don't have to communicate. You don't have to spend time together. Just provide and protect. That's what I was taught with my dad.

[01:00:07] You don't have to be there. You just provide and make sure they got food and clothes, and that's all you got to do. I thought that was the rule. I didn't know any different. Did the best I could, what I had. Didn't have a lot, but I knew one thing. I didn't want to be running a lift for 40 years. I knew that real quick.

[01:00:29] Luke: And when you were living there in Aspen, you would've been in your mid-20s then around the time you met my mom. And when I was born, you were 27, right?

[01:00:38] Alan: Yeah.

[01:00:39] Luke: And I guess you had quite the reputation around town for being a rebel rouser and getting in fights and stuff like that, huh?

[01:00:46] Alan: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[01:00:49] Luke: What were some of the things that would happen with that? How would you end up in these brawls in the bars and whatnot?

[01:00:55] Alan: It's easy. Just be a prick. So it doesn't take much. No, I had a real low tolerance for people abusing me, talking anything bad about me at any time. I was real thin-skinned. And I really never want to admit that, but I liked the feeling of hitting somebody. It felt good to me. It doesn't make any sense.

[01:01:30] To you, it wouldn't make any sense. But to me, it made sense from all the abuse I put up with as a child. All the piled-up resentments, all the piled up bullying that I went through, it came back where I finally got big and strong enough and nobody's going to ever bully me again.

[01:01:47] And I remember what cooled me down was I had three assault and batteries charged against me in six months. And I said, "I better cool it." And the judge says, "Next time I see you in here--" And I knew the judge. He's a friend of mine. He let me off pretty easy. "Next time I see you in here, Alan," he says, "I'm going to have to send you to jail."

[01:02:12] I says, "Okay, I'm not going to do this anymore." I quit doing it because I couldn't stand being claustrophobic in a jail. I was claustrophobic. You can't put me in jail. I'll die. That's probably the main reason I quit besides that. But I don't know. I just didn't tolerate any abusive language toward me or anything.

[01:02:33] I didn't tolerate anything. And actually, I would look for people that were mouthy. I would look for bullies. I'd just hang around them till I'd get some friction going. And I started some of them. I really did. Guy in Greeley, I started a fight. He was dancing with his girlfriend.

[01:02:50] I got him between him, started dancing with her. Why would a guy hit me? He hit me. They threw me out and I came back in. He's sitting in a booth and I just beat the shit out of him. And then he threw me out again. I just did stupid stuff like that. And happened quite a few times.

[01:03:10] And then people started becoming afraid of me. And then I realized one time on Main Street Big O and I, we were stopped by two guys on the side of the Main Street, and they wanted to fight. And so we got out and 5-0 hit one of them. He still got filmed. And my buddy got out and we got out there to confront him, and he hit this guy and knocked him down.

[01:03:36] And I was going to hit this guy and just a dawning came, a realization that this isn't who I was. This is not who you are deep down. This is not who you are. Quit doing this. This is not anywhere close to who you are really. And from that point on, I quit. I just realized that I didn't want to hurt anybody anymore. I didn't want to have that reputation. And when I took you to go to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, when you went to Judge [Inaudible], he didn't say a word to you. You remember that?

[01:04:11] Luke: No. Tell the story.

[01:04:13] Alan: You got in trouble for stealing dope down there and I had to go to court and I had an attorney hired to defend you. We sit in the courtroom and he says, "Mr. Storey, you're a bully." And that really pissed me off. But he was truthful. I didn't know that that's who I'd become. I had become who I hated as a child. I had become that personality. And my mind was going, where can I catch him in an alley and hammer him?

[01:04:42] That's where it went. He didn't say one word to you, but it had everything that I could remember from that because I was a troublemaker. And so he just said, "Do you have a choice with Luke? You can either send to reformatory or send to Bonners Ferry, Idaho."

[01:05:03] And I knew if I sent you the reformatory, you wouldn't make it. I knew that deep down you would make it. I says, "Okay, judge, I'm with you. He's going to  Bonners Ferry no matter what it cost. He's going to  Bonners Ferry, Idaho." And that's when I got with your mother and me, and we took you to  Bonners Ferry. And you said, "if you leave me here, I'm going to kill myself."

[01:05:25] And I says, "If I don't leave you here, you're going to kill yourself." And then we drove down the road about a mile, and we both started bawling like babies. It was really sad, but I knew that was the only hope I had for you. And it's the hardest thing in the world, to drive away from you and leave you there.

[01:05:49] But it was the best thing I ever did. It was the best help I could have given you under the circumstances. Knowing your background today like I do, it was the best thing I could have done for you. And I'm just thankful that I had enough money to keep you in there. I made enough to keep you going.

[01:06:06] Luke: How much does that school cost?

[01:06:09] Alan: That was way back then. Remember the year it was?

[01:06:12] Luke: '84 to '86, I think.

[01:06:14] Alan: Was it? It was 3,500 a month.

[01:06:16] Luke: Wow. It's a lot of money.

[01:06:18] Alan: Back then, it was a lot of money.

[01:06:21] Luke: Even now.

[01:06:22] Alan: Now it's no cheap thrill.

[01:06:25] Luke: When you stopped fighting, you realized that wasn't who you were. Did that have any correlation to around the time you stopped drinking?

[01:06:34] Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I stopped drinking around 32, 33. Yeah. I quit drinking entirely. I was standing bar with Jeff, my best friend, that got killed. See, your mother left and then Jeff came into my life. We became best friends. We're inseparable. And he lived with me and we just loved each other. God, we just loved each other.

[01:06:58] And then about a year after your mother left, he got married to a really sweetheart named Kristen. They lived in town above the Paragon, and he was in a glider one day with Dave Topel, who owned a bar there and the wing came off the glider and spun into the earth and hit right on the river in Aspen and killed them both instantly.

[01:07:22] Luke: They flew into the river?

[01:07:23] Alan: Yeah. Without a wing, you don't fly very good. You just spiral. It killed them both instantly. And that devastated me even worse. I hadn't healed up from the loss of your mother. Hadn't even come close to healing up from that and then my best friend gets killed, and then another close friend of mine gets killed about six months later in a plane wreck Joel Finley. I had three huge losses right there in three years, and I never bounced back. I just dove deeper into work. Didn't know how to deal with the feelings and the grief.

[01:07:54] Luke: When you quit drinking around that time, was it difficult? Did you have cravings? Did you try and then slip up and go drink?

[01:08:00] Alan: No, just quit working for me. Wouldn't give me a lift. Wouldn't take the pain away anymore. Quit working no matter what I tried. And I tried everything. I was tinted bar. Whatever back there, I tried.

[01:08:13] And then what really tipped me was I built a new house down at Elmore, about 13 acres. Built a new house down there, and I had them spray for bugs, chemicals under the floor. And I had all new paint, all new carpeting, all the outgassing. I got extremely sick, extremely sick. I got chronic fatigue so bad I couldn't even-- I had brain fog so bad I couldn't even hardly think or talk, and I was extremely sick.

[01:08:43] So then I started my search for doctors to find what was wrong with me, and I went everywhere in the world. I went to H2O2 IVs in Mexico. I went to hyperbaric oxygen chambers in Florida. Went to hyperbaric oxygen chamber in Phoenix.

[01:09:02] I went to Ecuador. I went to Canada. I went to about 20 other doctors throughout the United States, couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I was so sick. I know what it is today. Finally, after all these years, I know what it is. I went to Environmental Health Center in Dallas, Texas, for a month and read all about healthy living, healthy environment, healthy households and stuff I read for three weeks, educated myself.

[01:09:27] I went detoxed every day for a month in their saunas, took their protocols every day for a month, and I didn't get much better. And I still had brain fog and I still could hardly think. And I was sick for so many years. I didn't know what it was. The trick was, was I thought my marriage must be bad.

[01:09:48] So to save my life, I got out of the marriage, but nothing changed. I was still sick. So that didn't heal it. So something was definitely wrong with me. I just couldn't find out what the answer was. Today I know, but back then I didn't. I tried every supplement. I read every food book, I read every book known to man for self-help.

[01:10:15] I read everything. I took those books to the bookstore about two years ago. They filled a path, my pickup, all the books I'd bought, trying to get well, thinking I could read my way through it. None of that worked.

[01:10:30] Luke: What about the helicopter crash you were in?

[01:10:33] Alan: Hmm. I'd started a snow cab business with Howard Wagner back in the late '70s, early '80s. And I ran tours. I was a ski patrolman on Snowmass for three years. And then I started guiding deep, powder tours on Aspen Mountain as the guide. I did that for several years.

[01:10:59] Then Howard, my  earth-moving partner before I bought him out, we bought some Snowcats to run powder tours back in Lenado and back up Woody Creek. So we did that for a year. And I bought dynamite and I had all my ski patrol stuff. I knew first aid and I had all that down.

[01:11:22] So I guided and carried the dynamite back in the snowcats and I'd blow up places before we skied them. And I did that. That was fun. I did that for a whole winter and I really liked that. And then after that, Howard and I split up and he wanted a snowcat business and I didn't want any part of it because we lost $7,000 that winter.

[01:11:43] So I took the stone business. He got that and I got through with moving business. So there was a helicopter outfit out in Texas that flew in and they wanted me to show them where to ski, where they could do a helicopter skiing business. So I went in the helicopter with two other guys and the pilot and myself.

[01:12:04] And we flew off on this. It was a piston driven helicopter and we flew off up into Pearl Basin, which is just south of Aspen, about 20 miles. And the helicopter couldn't climb over 11,000 feet to start hovering. It couldn't gain any more altitude. So the pilot pulled it around, took us back to a Knife Blade Ridge right above Ashcroft by-- what's the name of that creek? Express Creek.

[01:12:29] And there was a real skinny ridge there and he tried to set it down and he couldn't set it down. If he set it down, he couldn't take it off again. So he took off. When he took off, he took off on the downwind side. There was no air on the downwind side because the wind hits the mountain, shoot the air up.

[01:12:44] There was an air foil there. So the engine blew up. And we went down about a thousand feet and crashed in the timber in about four or five foot of snow. We ended up being on our side and the propeller was up in the tree and the guys in the back. And then I hear that fuel hitting the manifold, going, psst, psst, psst, that this thing's going to blow up or burn.

[01:13:10] And the pilot was laying on me. I had my cowboy hat on and my big yellow ski park and my hunting boots with long underwear. I was prepared to be there and I had matches and stuff, but we lit there and then everybody was shook up and freaked out and going through all of the trauma of that.

[01:13:30] So I started walking down the canyon and the snow was up to my waist. I went by 100 yards and I says, "I'll never make it." It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So I walked back up through my tracks and I sat down. I got to think this thing out. And I thought for about 10 minutes and I said, "How are we going to get out of here? Because if we stay here, we're going to freeze and these guys are hurt, and my shoulders hurt and I'm pretty well beat up.

[01:13:57] And so I said, "If I go over the top, go back up over the top and get to the windward side of the mountain where there's no snow, I can make it down and make it to the toke lot and get some help." So I told those guys who are with me, I says, "You just follow my tracks and don't get out of my tracks and I'll take you guys and I'll show you way out of here."

[01:14:16] So I beat my way up through the deep snow, got up to the top of the crest of that hill, went down the other side, got to the where the wind had blown all the snow off the rocks. I lost 500 foot of elevation just on the rocks. Then between the two rocks, there'd be a little chute. I'd lay on my back, pull my park over my head and kick with my feet and kick my way down the snow field.

[01:14:40] And I finally made it to a snow machine road where they'd had Ski-Doos on it. And I walked down to the toke lot and I got some help. Just as the guys were coming out, the snow machines arrived. Took them to the hospital, took us all to the hospital, and that was a hair-raising experience.

[01:14:58] Luke: So nobody died though, huh?

[01:15:00] Alan: Not to my knowledge. It never made to paper.

[01:15:03] Luke: Huh.

[01:15:04] Alan: Years later, I had Betty Pfister call me and says, "Were you in a helicopter wreck up Express Creek?" And I says, "Yeah." "Do you know where it was?" And I said, "Yes, I do." Says, "We got people bringing parts off of that, bringing helicopter parts down off that mountain." I said, "Yeah, they never made to paper."

[01:15:20] Luke: Wow.

[01:15:20] Alan: I know how it went under screen, but nobody ever found out about it.

[01:15:24] Luke: Interesting.

[01:15:25] Alan: Pretty weird.

[01:15:26] Luke: So you're living in Colorado and then my mom takes me out to California. So you would pretty much just see me in the summers then, and sometimes on holidays and stuff.

[01:15:37] Alan: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:37] Luke: And what was that like for you trying to understand how to parent me when I would come visit and things like that?

[01:15:45] Alan: I didn't know what to do. Didn't know what to do. See, I still had so many feelings for your mother that every time I'd see you, it'd bring up feelings for your mother and you both. I was really emotionally torn up. I was 100% invested in it, and to lose that and to lose you and have her move back was a huge loss for me-- huge loss.

[01:16:15] How I looked at it at the time, it was like you lined my whole family up against a wall and you shot them all. That's how I felt. I had a death wish. That's why I started rodeoing racing stock cars. I didn't care if I lived or died. I really didn't have much point in living. I really didn't see it. So I started doing all these extreme sports.

[01:16:37] Luke: What was the first thing you started doing in rodeos?

[01:16:40] Alan: Riding bareback horses.

[01:16:43] Luke: So they sit you on a horse, you grab the horse by the mane, they open up.

[01:16:46] Alan: No, you got to handle everything you hang on to, and it's an eight-second ride. And you got to spur the horse out on the withers when it comes out. You got to have your feet in the right place on the horse bucks. And if you stay on eight seconds, they score you based on your performance.

[01:17:01] And I was too big to ride back in horses. I was just too big of a guy. Guys that were good in rough stock riding are generally 5'6, weigh 150 pounds. So I wasn't good at that. Then I got into team roping and I did that for 15 years solid. I was pretty good at team roping.

[01:17:18] Luke: And then what about the stock car racing? What was up with that?

[01:17:21] Alan: Stock car racing is another way that I could just burn off adrenaline and just burn up stuff. And that was just another way of approval seeking so I'd be worth something. If I'm really good at that, I'll be worth something. Because when your mother left me, I didn't think I was worth anything.

[01:17:35] I had a self-esteem that was low anyway, and then I lost you and her and went down to nothing. I was operating on zero. My tank was empty. So the only way I could get self-esteem in my mind was to work hard, produce more, outdo people, outwork anybody. Even my stone crew. I'd have to outwork everybody, my stone crew. Lift bigger rocks, put more on. Made me really strong, but it was a dumb way to go.

[01:18:01] Luke: What kind of car did you have, and how does that work with the vehicle and all that?

[01:18:09] Alan: Actually, it wasn't an oval track. It was a race car track in Woody Creek. It was all paved. It was about a mile and a half, maybe two-mile track, but had a lot of s-curves in it and had a long straightaway then a hard s at the other end. And so you'd be graded on the car you had and the size of the engine you had and stuff like that. There'd be different classes.

[01:18:34] So there's a super fast, a fast, and then another class. I always raced in the fast class. And I won trophies and stuff like that, but I liked it because it was thrilling and exciting. And we'd go into town and then we'd go party after the race. It was a big deal.

[01:18:52] Luke: What kind of car did you have?

[01:18:53] Alan: 70 Dodge Challenger with a 440 cubic catch engine and a four speed. And it didn't weigh much. It was totally gutted out of everything. It had a seat. It had a roll bar and a shell. Didn't weigh anything. And I put big slicks on the back. I put racing tires on the front. Put steel brakes on it so you couldn't-- ordinary brakes won't hold the car back, so you have to put steel brakes on it and the steel will grind steel and slow you down.

[01:19:27] And of course your brakes would be red hot. Your wheels would be red hot from braking. You'd be going 100 miles an hour down the straightaway. You'd have to break down to about 15 miles to make the turn curve. So you had to go real fast and haul the brakes on the slow down so you could make the turn at the end. Then you go around some s-turns. There'd be about 10 guys in a race, 10 or 15 cars in a race generally.

[01:19:54] Luke: Did you have any accidents?

[01:19:56] Alan: My first time around, I tipped it over on its top, first time around the track. I was practicing. I didn't know I had to chain it down. And it just went around that s-curve and just went plop over on its top and I was upside down and all the gasoline was pouring everywhere.

[01:20:14] And I thought, oh shit. Getting out of here, I'd unbuckle myself, crawl out the little hole I had to get in. Oh God, that was funny. I ran off the track a few times. You run boulders and shit. I'd run off the track, miss my turns, miss my curves, get bumped off the track by somebody.

[01:20:35] Luke: And when I was a kid and I would come out and visit, what was I like?

[01:20:47] Alan: You were like a kid that didn't fit in in the country or didn't fit in the city. You didn't really take into hunting and fishing. That wasn't really a thing. You liked to look for bugs and lizards and frogs and snakes and stuff. You loved wildlife. And so I'd try to show you as much wildlife as I could show you, take you little hikes and stuff to get you around wildlife, and you'd always be looking at flowers, picking at stuff. You're like a walking zoologist and biologist combined. You're always interested in the wild, everything.

[01:21:21] You're just totally interested in that. That was really who you were. You were so interested in everything in nature. And you haven't changed. You still do the same thing at this age now, but back then you did too. Yeah. You liked all that and you liked that more than anything.

[01:21:42] Luke: But not so much with the hunting and fishing, huh?

[01:21:46] Alan: No. You didn't much care about hunting and fishing much. A little bit, but you never-- I think what happens is I lost so much your growing up years that you never got ingrained with that environment that I was doing. And I definitely didn't want you rodeoing, and I definitely didn't want you running stock cars. I didn't want you to do that part of my life. So I tried to shade you away from that part of my life that I didn't want you to take any interest in because it was not very safe.

[01:22:19] Luke: Do you remember the time we went up bear hunting with all your hound dogs and somehow came home with a bear cub?

[01:22:27] Alan: Oh yeah. You were with me. That was Hartley, you, and me. We went up a Cattle Creek, clear upon top of the salt mountain, and we finally treed a bear that had two cubs, but we wanted to take these cubs alive, so  Hartley climbed up the tree and one of the cubs fell down on a stake and went right through. The odds of it hitting a stake is one in a million. And run on a steak and killed it. So I was able to catch the other cub. And we caught it.

[01:23:02] Luke: What happened to the mom?

[01:23:03] Alan: The mom went away. We didn't shoot the mother.

[01:23:06] Luke: Oh, so the mom ran off and then the two cubs ran up the tree?

[01:23:09] Alan: Yeah, yeah.

[01:23:12] Luke: And then the one cub fell out, got spiked. And how the hell did you get the remaining single cub out of the tree and into the truck?

[01:23:19] Alan: We had to get it down and throw a jacket over it. When it fell out of the tree, we made sure it didn't fall out where it was going to get hurt. And it fell out and bounced there and we got a jacket over it and got it there. It tried to bite us and everything. And then we were able to get in a truck and get it back to my house and put it in a dog pen.

[01:23:38] Luke: And how long was that bear living at your house with the dogs?

[01:23:42] Alan: Oh, I kept that bear there for about a month. And Hartley took it to Denver. And then it grew up and then he turned it loose.

[01:23:50] Luke: Really?

[01:23:51] Alan: Yeah.

[01:23:51] Luke: He turned it loose out in Golden or whatever.

[01:23:54] Alan: Yeah. Up in the hills. Yeah.

[01:23:55] Luke: Oh, wow.

[01:23:56] Alan: Yeah.

[01:23:57] Luke: And with a situation like that, you trying to grab and the bear is just trying to bite you, you weren't afraid?

[01:24:03] Alan: Yeah, you're afraid. You don't get bit for sure. You got to be careful.

[01:24:07] Luke: Yeah.

[01:24:08] Alan: Yeah. You get behind the neck so it can't bite you, grab behind the neck. It wants to bite you.

[01:24:13] Luke: Yeah.

[01:24:13] Alan: It's like a dog. You don't want to put your hand in its mouth.

[01:24:16] Luke: Oh. Before I forget, we just heard the story from your sister Carla.

[01:24:20] Alan: Yeah.

[01:24:21] Luke: But this is a story that I've heard relayed by you, and I remember as a kid there was this taxidermy mountain lion, the head and the body, a big skin, lion's skin up on the wall. And I remember being a kid and you had said that that lion had come from one paca's hunts. And that that lion had attacked him and then they killed it. Can you tell the story of the mountain lion?

[01:24:47] Alan: Yeah, but I wasn't there. Carla was there, but I know the story pretty well. I know where they were. They were up Spring Creek, which is about 10 miles off the highway between Rangeley and Meeker. And Vern Caldwell was a guy when I was a kid, I'd hunt lions with horseback wise.

[01:25:05] Luke: Keep going. You're okay.

[01:25:07] Alan: So anyway, Vern was the government trapper and he had a son named Johnny, and Vern hunted lions and trapped coyotes and wolves and stuff his whole life, he had a pack of hounds, so they went up Spring Creek looking for lions. Back then, there were not very many lions.

[01:25:23] Back then they had a poison called 1080, and they'd try to get rid of the lions and the coyotes and the wolves. They'd put 1080 in the carcass of a dead deer or something. And if a lion or a predator ate that, they would die. So not very many lions. Then there was 100-dollar bounty on a mountain lion then, and there was about a $35-dollar bounty on a coyote because they ran a lot of sheep in that country about that time. There's no sheep today. Very few.

[01:25:52] But what happened is that they got up there and they treed the lion up in a cedar tree, and then they saw the lion. They wanted to take it alive and take it back to town to show off. It's a macho thing. So they roped it, but they didn't rope it around the neck. They rope it around the neck and under the forearm.

[01:26:10] And so they roped it around there. Then they'd kick it out of the tree and the rope will keep the lion hanging there because he's hanging by his neck, supposedly. But this time the lion was hanging there and my dad was underneath it trying to tie the hind legs together, so he couldn't scratch or anything. And he was underneath the lion. The lion bit through the rope and fell right on top of him and then clawing through the face.

[01:26:33] Bit his arm three or four places. Had him on the ground and the dogs were on him. And it's a big mess. And my dad was bleeding really bad and hurt real bad. And then Johnny  Caldwell finally chased the lion down with the dogs on it and shot the lion. The lion had got another guy too, and got him by the arm. [Inaudible], and it got him down by the arm.

[01:26:53] So they had to ride out. The lion was dead, but they had to ride out 10 miles in the middle of winter in the snow to get back to help to get to the hospital. So my dad was in the hospital for a month trying to keep the infection out of his wounds. See, a lion has a real short jaw, and they have so much power in that jaw.

[01:27:14] They can break bones or anything. You take a big long-jawed animal and they don't have that much power, but that little short jaw, just so full of muscles, they can break anything. But that's how they kill deer. They get on a deer and they bite right behind the neck and crush the spinal column. That's how they kill deer.

[01:27:32] Luke: Really?

[01:27:32] Alan: Yeah.

[01:27:33] Luke: Wow. They don't bleed them out. Huh?

[01:27:35] Alan: Kill them right there.

[01:27:36] Luke: Wow.

[01:27:37] Alan: Get on top of them, bite them behind the neck, and they're done.

[01:27:39] Luke: Hmm.

[01:27:40] Alan: They kill deer easy.

[01:27:42] Luke: Wow, that's interesting.

[01:27:43] Alan: But anyway, he finally healed up from all that, and the hide's up on Blade Park right now. He's a 160-pound lion, big Tom for that time. The record Tom I know in Colorado was over 200 pounds now, which is a big, huge lion.

[01:27:56] Luke: Yeah.

[01:27:57] Alan: And it's the biggest one I've heard of, the biggest one I've seen stuffed.

[01:28:01] Luke: Wow.

[01:28:01] Alan: But back then it was a big deal to go lion hunting. You hunt in the winter on horseback, and you try to cut ridges and cut tracks. Cut a track, you turn the dogs loose on and try to tree it and shoot it and bring it in. Get $100 bounty. $100, that would be back in '50s, was a lot of money. That was a bunch of money then. It was like 1,000 a day or ,1500 a day, probably. Maybe 2,000 a day, something like that.

[01:28:29] Luke: So what was it like for you when my mom finally couldn't take care of me when I was 13? What, did she call you and say, "Hey, I can't handle this kid anymore? He's got to live with you?" What was that story?

[01:28:43] Alan: That's basically the story. She couldn't handle it anymore. I said, "Send him out here." I say, "Have him live with me." I was glad to get you. I was happy to have you come, really. I had no idea what you had gone through. She'd never communicated to me what you had gone through as a child. I had no idea what was going on out there. She'd never tell me all the stuff that was going on. I didn't know what was going on with you and her until years later. I couldn't put the pieces together. I just had no freaking clue what was going on out there.

[01:29:16] Luke: What did you think when I came out at 13 and I had long hair and was all into rock and roll and all that kind of stuff?

[01:29:24] Alan: I thought you hadn't been getting the right kind of care. That's first thing I thought, was you hadn't been getting the right kind of care and that you just didn't feel like you fit in and you had to do that to fit in. And you were trying to survive in a world out there where you weren't getting the love and attention and affection you needed. That's what I thought.

[01:29:43] Luke: Do you remember the day when the police called you to come get me from the Pitkin County Courthouse?

[01:29:50] Alan: Yeah, yeah. I couldn't believe that. What was he doing in there? My God. Between that and when you got caught in school for-- what were you doing? Smoking dope in school. Yeah. My God. I was, "What the hell, Luke? Straighten up. What's mattering you? Why can't you just straighten up?"

[01:30:07] Luke: So you had gone out that day with a girlfriend of yours, I think, up in the high country riding horses or something.

[01:30:12] Alan: Yeah, probably.

[01:30:13] Luke: I stayed home and broke into the neighbor's house and got caught.

[01:30:17] Alan: Yeah. Yeah, that was probably true. Yeah.

[01:30:23] Luke: And so you had to come down to the courthouse and get me. Were you pissed off or more worried?

[01:30:28] Alan: I was more worried than anything.

[01:30:30] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:30:31] Alan: I was more afraid than anything because I didn't want to see you go to Canyon City or go to the juvenile hall or any of that stuff. I wanted to hire an attorney to get your ass out of there. I didn't know what to do with you. And it seemed like you're pretty high strung on going down the same path. I didn't really understand it. I really didn't get a grasp on it. And I really didn't know how to parent either. A lot of things going against me. I didn't know how to do any of that. I really didn't.

[01:31:06] Luke: Did you feel safe about my life when I was sent to Rocky Mount Academy?

[01:31:13] Alan: Yeah, I did. I felt like you were in the right hands. I felt really good. I felt very, very grateful that that was there. I felt that that was the only hope you had to go there, because living with me, you weren't getting any better.

[01:31:28] I wouldn't do anything to help you. I didn't know what to do and send you to Bos Ferry seemed like the right out. That's the only choice I had. Either that or reform school. And I knew if you went to reform school, you come out worse than when you went in. I know what those things were like. So I just had to say, yeah, that's the only thing we can do. And I called your mother and say, this is the only choice we have because I couldn't afford to let you go down there.

[01:31:57] Luke: And then what was I like, or when I got out of there, were your hopes dashed because I came out-- were you hoping that I had been reformed, but I came out and started hanging around with the wrong crowd and--

[01:32:09] Alan: I could see that happening. You hang out with the wrong crowd again. I knew that was happening, but I had no control over. But when you finally got to the stage where you were enough pain to go into recovery than I had hope, than I had hope. But I knew you were a whole lot better off when you came out than when you went in.

[01:32:28] Luke: Yeah.

[01:32:28] Alan: I knew that. You had changed a lot. You went camping by yourself with all those other kids up there and they did a lot of stuff to give yourself confidence. Did a lot of things I really liked. I liked the people there. Thought there are good supervisions there. You're taught how to work a little bit. They gave you work incentive. They gave you a lot of things you'd never get at a reformatory.

[01:32:51] So yeah, you got out of there. I had high hopes that you were going to be good. And later on I found out you were bad and doing all this other crazy stuff. I didn't know what to do then. I didn't know how to help you. I didn't know how to help you. I didn't know what to do.

[01:33:07] There was no place for you to go outside of go to treatment. And that's where you went. And that's what finally started turning you around, going to treatment. And then you're going to got into sobriety and got AA and got a sponsor and started getting help and started-- but most of the damage done, I think to you, is in the first 5 or 10 years of your life.

[01:33:30] I had no idea what you were going through in LA or up in Concord, where the hell you were. I had no idea what you were going through there. Nobody told me that. Your mother never told me what you were going through, what life was like. Couldn't get it out of your mother. I thought everything was going good. I thought she was really doing a good job with you. I had no idea what her life was like until later on when the truth came out.

[01:33:56] Luke: And what were my mom's parents like? Did you meet her mom only, or did you ever meet her dad?

[01:34:05] Alan: I met her dad. Her dad was a gruff, alcoholic kind of guy. I thought he was pretty mean guy, big guy, pretty arrogant, pretty boastful. Her mother was just sweet as you can be. I loved her mother. Phi had a heart of gold. She was just a tremendous woman, heavy woman. She was a hoarder. She had a lot of mental stuff going on. But man, I just really thought the world to her.

[01:34:32] She wouldn't hurt a flee. I remember one Christmas her washing machine was broken, so I sent her a brand-new washing machine. She thought that was great. I didn't care. I just said she needs this washing machine. I cared about her. Was no alternative motive. I just cared about Phi. She was just a sweetheart. And her dad, I didn't know him very well at all. I met him a few times. That was it.

[01:34:59] Luke: And so when I left Colorado, I was about to turn 18 after I gotten out of RMA. I packed all my stuff in my little Subaru and I went back out to California and then moved to Hollywood, dropped out of high school. Do you remember having any feelings about me quitting school?

[01:35:15] Alan: Sure. Yeah, but I knew you're in school. Had to go see the principal of school with you. You were smoking dope and stuff, and you didn't like school. You hated school. You didn't feel like you fit in there. I don't know. Yeah, I thought you should have finished school. But you weren't into sports or any of that stuff. You were more a loner.

[01:35:45] Luke: What was the experience like for you when I moved to Hollywood when I was 19? I just left home and took off. Did you have any feelings about that, or when you would come visit me when I lived in LA, what was that like?

[01:35:58] Alan: I didn't know what you were doing. That was a big thing. You sent me pictures of you playing music and stuff. You didn't tell me you were totally stoned out of your mind. There's a few sentences you didn't include in the paragraph.

[01:36:12] Oh, I'm doing good, dad. I'm in this band. We're going here, we're going there, and blah, blah, blah. I got that part, but I didn't got the part where I'm in real trouble. I'm stoned all the time. I didn't get that part. Because I thought you were doing pretty good after RMA. I thought you were doing pretty good. I didn't realize you just slid back down the old slide down to the bottom again.

[01:36:31] Luke: Oh, I see.

[01:36:32] Alan: I didn't know that was going on. You weren't too forthright in telling me that.

[01:36:37] Luke: And when I would come visit, when I was living in LA in my early 20s or when you would come out there with the boys and see me, did you notice anything? Or was I deceptive enough to make you think I was doing okay?

[01:36:48] Alan: You're real deceptive. You're real deceptive. I have the mind that believes what people tell me. I have a hard time reading between the lines. Had I read between the lines, I know there's some problems there. I don't know what to do with it though. What do I do with it? What do you do with somebody that's using--

[01:37:08] And I didn't know anything about alcoholism. I didn't think I was an alcoholic to begin with until I got those tapes from you years later. Started listening to them. I said, "Shit, I got that disease." I thought it was all about drinking. I had no idea that drinking's a small part of it. But I had visions of going out there, seeing you on stage and playing and stuff. That's what I wanted to see, was you doing what you're doing. That's what I had vision. I wanted to surprise you doing that.

[01:37:33] And then, gosh, May and I went out there. We were down there on the Southern California, down by San Diego someplace, and you guys came down. You're pretty straight then. I didn't see anything wrong with you then. I thought you were doing pretty darn good and the kids were doing good and we had a good time.

[01:37:47] Went to Universal Studios. Had a really good time too around there. I didn't think anything was really going wrong. It seemed like everything was going pretty good in your life. I had no idea until I get these phone calls that, "Dad, you send me 2,500 because I spent my girlfriend's money." Or I get another phone call, "Dad, I let this kid 13-year-old drive this car and he wrecked it. Can you bail me out?" Oh my God. What's next? What's next?

[01:38:16] Luke: Funny thing about those experiences is that was after I'd gotten sober.

[01:38:19] Alan: I know. That was after you'd gotten sober. Yeah.

[01:38:22] Luke: We went down on that trip to Mexico. That was right before I got sober.

[01:38:27] Alan: Yeah.

[01:38:27] Luke: That was at the end of the line there. But you remember, when we were in Morelia, we had some issues you and I.

[01:38:35] Alan: Yeah, totally do. I had a big issue with you. Supposed to be back. We were in a strange town, Mexican town. I don't know anybody there. Be back at 10 o'clock. Midnight, you still weren't home. Streets are dark. 100% Mexicans. What am I going to do? I think you got kidnapped. My mind goes into the ozone. What could happen? He got kidnapped. Later on I found out what you were doing on the roof.

[01:39:00] Luke: And I had taken Andy and Cody.

[01:39:04] Alan: You took them with you.

[01:39:05] Luke: Who were young.

[01:39:06] Alan: Yeah, they were little kids. And I was scared to death. And so when I got mad at you, it wasn't the anger. It was the fear underneath that. I was terrified something happened to you, all three of you. I was just terrified. Maybe they got kidnapped or something. I was terrified. And you were the oldest one, so I took it out on you. You guys went down there. You're the lead of the pack. And so I was really upset. I would, but it was just fear.

[01:39:34] I couldn't sleep. I was just laying there wondering what to do. Should I go see the police? I talked to the guy, the driver. What can I do? What can I do? How can I find them? I don't know anything about Morelia. I knew where I was in the hotel, but I didn't know where the hotel was in the city.

[01:39:52] Didn't know anything about it. But luckily, you showed up later. Oh my God. I said, "Oh my God." I felt so grateful that you guys got back alive. Because I didn't trust the streets of Morelia at night.

[01:40:06] Luke: That sounds like the name of a song. So when did you meet May?

[01:40:14] Alan: I met her when I still having so much anxiety and depression and just so much of that stuff's still going on. But she'd been with me my whole life. I looked up counselors and she did EMDR, which is a technique.

[01:40:32] Luke: Really? She did that?

[01:40:33] Alan: Yeah, she taught that.

[01:40:34] Luke: I didn't know that.

[01:40:35] Alan: Yeah, she did EMDR, so I picked her up just--

[01:40:36] Luke: Where you stare at the hand or-- that kind of thing?

[01:40:39] Alan: Yeah.

[01:40:39] Luke: Hypnosis almost.

[01:40:40] Alan: Yeah. It's like hypnosis. And so I needed some help because I was anxious all the time. I couldn't relax, couldn't settle down. I met her down there and she asked me to fill--

[01:40:50] Luke: Grand Junction.

[01:40:51] Alan: Yeah. She asked me to fill out a form, a confidentiality form and all that stuff, and no hanky panky, none of that. I had appointment for the next week. She says, "I don't want to see you again." I thought, oh, great, Alan. You're really good. I called her and said, "If you won't see me again, will you go out with me?"

[01:41:17] And she says, "Yeah, I'll go out with you." I said, "Okay." So I took her to a Mule Deer banquet where I was president of Mule Deer Association. And I just talked to my buddies and she sat at the table real calm, real nice. And I started going to movies and doing a few things with her and hanging out with her, just developed a friendship.

[01:41:40] And she says, "We can't fiddle around because it's against my code of ethics with the profession I'm in." I say, "Probably good idea." So we just grew into caring about each other and liking to spend time with each other. And eventually, we decided after a couple years to get married. And I was terrified.

[01:42:08] Luke: How long have you been married now?

[01:42:10] Alan: I don't know. We've been together 18 years.

[01:42:12] Luke: Eighteen years. Yeah. Why were you terrified to get married?

[01:42:16] Alan: Because I've been through two horrible divorces. I know what I'm doing. When you get to that point where there's calls for commitment, that's where the rubber meets the road. I didn't have any rubber on my tires. I was heading for the hills.

[01:42:36] I was looking for a way out, like I had been doing for 20 years. No, that's what it was. But I went ahead and I knew that this was the right thing to do, and I just knew in my heart that I couldn't find anybody better. There was nothing wrong with her. I couldn't pick her apart.

[01:42:54] My escape mechanism was always finding fault with them, somebody, and then vanishing. I'd be something really important, like, I don't like the color of her shoes or something really important, but it was just fear. Just fear of getting munched again, emotionally and psychologically and financially and all that.

[01:43:18] I was pretty much terrified, but I had to overcome that fear. And I learned I can't go overcome the fear if I don't do it. My chance of finding anybody better than her, slim and none. Or I get to choose to live by myself the rest of my life. Which one makes the most sense? I said, "I don't want to choose to live by myself the rest of my life. I guess I'll have to face the fear."

[01:43:44] So I faced the fear. Believe me, I was scared. I had night sweats for three months after I got married with anxiety. But what that is is, see, I had a hyperactive amygdala. My limbic system was in a trauma loop, so everything I saw was exaggerated 100 times.

[01:44:10] Like a mouse to normal people would be this big of a fear, a mouse, to me, which I'm not afraid of mice, but if I was a mouse, to me, would be 10 feet tall. So I magnified everything in my life, no matter what it was. Anything threatening at all was magnified 100 times. I didn't know. And I started listening to my mind.

[01:44:33] I got a mind that lies to me. This limbic system trauma loop is lying to me. I can't believe half what it tells me anymore. So that's what I finally found out after all these years. This has been my problem from day one. So what I've learned for me for today, where I am now, is that I finally have a solution to the problem I've had since I was probably five or six years old.

[01:45:00] And that was a limbic system that was overreacting to everything and protecting me through hypervigilance, isolation, and avoidance. That's how it protected me. But it was overprotecting me, and I had obsessive thoughts. I'd have obsessive fears, couldn't go to sleep at night, rumination, anxiety, depression, insomnia, avoidance, overreacting, a lot of old behaviors, a lot of old behaviors, old thought behaviors. So that's what I do now, is try to retrain the brain and get myself to normalcy.

[01:45:45] Luke: After I got sober and you started seeing my life improve in Alcoholics Anonymous and then I gave you those Bob Anderson tapes and you started going to meetings, was that the first time that you started taking your own spirituality seriously? Had you ever believed in God or anything like that?

[01:46:03] Alan: Yeah, I believed in God, Luke, until I was 10 years old. And my life at that time was so fearful that I said, "God, you've left me, and I got to get into self-reliance because I can't rely on you anymore." And then I got in total self-reliance from then on.

[01:46:24] I lost that feeling of God in my life and it totally evaporated. And I remember when I'd said it. I was underneath a drilling rig, walking home from school. I'll never forget when I said it. And when I changed that brain set, that mindset, because my life was a living hell with fear, I became afraid of everything.

[01:46:48] And that's what started twisting my limbic system into the fear mode, was that. And then as things progressed in my life, my limbic system started acting up more and more and more and more and more and more and more. Helicopter wrecks, wrecking stock cars, getting bucked off horses. Whatever it was, was creating the perfect storm for my limbic system to totally get deranged and overactive.

[01:47:20] Luke: And then when eventually you started going to AA meetings and finding some relief there, when did you pick up your faith again?

[01:47:29] Alan: I don't know if I've really picked it up or not. I just know there's a power greater than me. And I know that the power greater than me is when I let go of control, when I can start accepting things as they are, quit fighting anybody and everything. That, to me, is letting go of that control, which is my whole life controlling things.

[01:47:47] And when you take that away, my mind says it's not going to work out the way you want it to work out. So it's gradually, little by little, letting go of that control and just accepting things as they are and quit fighting. And all the steps helped me with that. All the steps helped me a lot. And I did thorough steps as much as thorough as I could, of me applying them as much as I could.

[01:48:10] But I finally come to realize, after making all my amends and not having resentments anymore, get rid of my resentments, I don't really have any that I know-- I probably subconsciously have some resentments, but they don't reach my conscious level where I know that I resent something.

[01:48:30] There's things I dislike. I don't like things, but I don't really have that deep hatred toward people that I had, that I'm going to get even with you, that feeling like, you mess with me, I'm going to get even. I always had that mentality, but now it's like, if I had to get even with everybody that screwed me in my life, it'd be 36-hour a day job.

[01:48:55] Luke: And so do you have a practice of prayer in your life now? Do you contemplate God or talk to God as you're living your life?

[01:49:06] Alan: Yeah. Yeah, I do every day. I do my ritual. I'm doing a program now called neurodynamic-- can't think--

[01:49:23] Luke: D something S.

[01:49:25] Alan: DNRS.

[01:49:25] Luke: DNRS.

[01:49:26] Alan: I'll just simplify it. Did dynamic neural retraining system. I do that every day for an hour at least. And I post online with other people that go through this program. And what I've come to realize, the reason behind my drinking at 12 and alcoholism and growing up in alcoholism, the reason I think my father drank was because he was just driven by fear too.

[01:49:57] You've got the neurons in your brain. Neuroplasticity has only been really studied for the last 10 years. So I started researching neuroplasticity of the brain. I can see where the neurons that I've been using are malfunctioning and they're big. I got to the same result every time.

[01:50:11] Every time I see something, I get the same result because I keep doing the same thing. And it's retraining that neural pathways and the synopsis in my brain to react in a different way. And when I do that, then I always have a thankful part of my future visualization or my past visualization, which is always positive.

[01:50:32] That I come into a prayer that, thank God. Thank you for everything you've given me. Thank you for this program, and thank you for my sons are still alive. Thank you for my wonderful wife. Thank you for everything I've got in my life. I just go from a negative mindset, which is the alcoholic thinking mindset, and to changing that mindset into positive thinking that everything is good and going to be good.

[01:50:56] And I don't hang around with the negative people anymore. That everything's bad. The world's going to come to an end and all that stuff. I'm more like, I don't watch the news anymore. I don't read newspaper anymore. I don't do any of that. It's all negative press. I'm doing everything I can in my life to segregate myself, separate myself from the negativity that's in front of me every day.

[01:51:20] Because what I've learned is the normal mind has a negative bias. Now you put an alcoholic there with an alcoholic mind, with that mind, and his negative mind is off the charts. So I know that, I need to stay away from that negative input, negative influence on my mind on a daily basis, and watch comedies, watch sporting events without being invested who wins.

[01:51:49] Don't get caught up in controversy, in politics, or religion. I have my own feelings about it, but as of a year ago, I've disengaged from that. I don't read the paper about Trump or what he's doing, what he's not doing. I don't argue with my sister anymore. I don't have to prove myself right anymore with either one of my sisters or my family.

[01:52:09] I just let them believe what they want to believe and let it go, and it seems to work out pretty good. I just avoid certain subjects to talk about that I have opinion on. It doesn't mean my opinion's right, but it seems right to me.

[01:52:26] Luke: You seem to have a really happy, healthy relationship. What are a couple of the key points that have helped you to have a successful relationship with May?

[01:52:40] Alan: I think the key thing I had to learn right off the bat was women need to be cherished. That means I have taken myself out of my selfishness and care about somebody else. Because inherently, growing up in an alcoholic family, the way I was growing up with no boundaries, no limits, I was pretty selfish and self-centered my whole life. I did what I wanted to do.

[01:53:04] Everybody in the back of the book, those 42 stories, almost everybody in the back of the book did what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do, who they wanted to do it with. It's a lot of selfishness in there. So I could identify that. So with May, I had to learn I had to cherish her for who she is.

[01:53:20] And what I had to learn is men need to be respected. Those two things are primary. I need her respect and she needs my cherishing. And I need to take care of her and protect her. And she needs to show me appreciation and admiration at some point for things that I do do.

[01:53:39] And that's another thing that makes it as being clean and honest. Same principles as AA. First principle is honesty. Got to be honest with her. I don't go out and cat around. I don't go out and do any of that stuff. Or any place there's women that could twist my head a little bit, I go somewhere else. I don't put myself in dangerous situations.

[01:54:05] My dad was a flander and I don't want to do that. So it hadn't been easy to change that behavior, but I've had to do it because I don't want to live with the guilt I would feel if I change back to the old behavior.

[01:54:19] And the best thing about marriage is sharing. It's like we've talked about, having similar interests, similar values. I can trust her no matter where she is. She can trust me no matter where I am. There's no jealousy. There's no battles. There's no fight over who's right and who's wrong. As long as she understands that I'm right, there's no problem.

[01:54:42] It just works out pretty good. But I had to find women that are feminine. That's just me. And I like women that are nurturing. See, what I didn't realize is we all have these needs, physical, emotional, and nurturing needs, and most of us that grow up in alcoholic families never got the emotional needs met.

[01:55:09] So we struggle with that in trying to get those needs met. And almost everybody in EMDR in my program I'm doing now, almost everybody has been affected the same way that I have been affected and you've been affected. So we just didn't get a very good chance growing up. Created a lot of pain in our lives all the way through our lives. It created a lot of pain.

[01:55:45] Luke: How have you and May learned to communicate and resolve issues as they come up?

[01:55:52] Alan: There's a tool. We don't use it anymore. We used to use it a lot because I was so afraid of being imposed on by family members and other people taking advantage of me. It's called a knee to knee. And so we learned that technique. It's a counseling technique where you go eyeball to eyeball, sitting right across like you and I are right now, and then I have something bothering me.

[01:56:17] And then one of us starts and the other one can't say a word till I'm finished. And then I have to wait for them to say and return to me and not interrupt until they're finished. My mind creates problems. It's a problem building mind, and it's not even close to reality 90% of the time. So we sit knee to knee and I say, "When you did this, blah, blah, blah, I felt that, blah, blah, blah." And I go, "Da, da, da, da." And then she'll say, "Is there more?"

[01:56:51] I says, "Yeah, matter of fact, there is. And when you did this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I felt this." And she'd say, "Is there more? I go, "Yes. Matter of fact, there's a lot more." And I keep going until I'm all out of all the things that have pissed me off or bothered me or where I got hung up on.

[01:57:08] Then when I'm all done with what I've got, then I says, "Okay, now it's your turn." She says, "What's been bothering you?" And she goes, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And I have to repeat it word for word. You said you didn't like it the way I drove and you didn't like it because I looked at that woman, or whatever. Whatever it could possibly be, she'll say that. And I say, "What I heard you say is--" So I understand what she's saying because if I'm just communicating with you, you're thinking about how you're going to communicate back to me. But if you're thinking that you have to repeat whatever I'm saying, it takes all that mind chatter out of having to prove that you're right.

[01:57:49] It takes that out of there. So where you have to say, "This is what I heard you say. Am I right?" And you repeat it word for word, and if I miss it, she said, "No, you missed it. You miss this. Repeat this again." Da, da da da da. Okay, this is what I heard, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[01:58:05] So you go back through, so you communicate completely. And when you're done, everything's done. And you get up and you walk away and you're clean. You're not carrying stuff around with you for a week or two that's bothering you. I had issues and issues with her kids, issues and issues, which, to me, were deal killers.

[01:58:30] But it was my mind building it up in a deal killer. And I realize now that I had everything out of proportion. It was no big deal. But my mind would let it live in there for weeks at a time, over and over and over. That's the limbic system being totally out of control, keeping me in the fear zone.

[01:58:52] But those are the things that, if I had to say one thing, Luke, that helped me was, number one, to take my time little by little, little by little. Stay out of the bed. Stay out of rack. Don't have sex with him. Stay out of bed. Develop a friendship. See if you even like him first. That's a good start.

[01:59:16] And then build from that like to infatuation or appreciation or appreciate who they are as women. And then you can go from that. You can go into a deeper feeling of love and commitment where you don't want to see other women. You're happy with who you've got.

[01:59:34] And so when you find one that fits most of those, they're not going to be perfect, but find fit most of those little things that you like, then you can have a lasting relationship and be honest and change your old behaviors and quit doing the things that ruin your old relationships.

[01:59:50] Start with something that does make a new relationship, and that's called honesty. That's called communication, and learn how to do that, and be honest about it. And I think you're really honest.

[02:00:06] Luke: I am.

[02:00:07] Alan: I know you are. I know you are.

[02:00:09] Luke: Speaking of honest, there was something that you did years ago when you and May were visiting out there in Southern California. And I came down by San Diego or something, and I came down there and we were in the hotel and you pulled me aside and you said, "Hey, Luke. I want to ask you something." You said, "When you swear, it really offends May, my wife, and it costs a lot around her and it makes her feel really uncomfortable. So I'd appreciate if you didn't do that."

[02:00:37] And I never even thought about it. That's how I talk to everyone. Never even occurred to me that not everyone is like that. And then you said something to me, and that was a wake-up call because I don't want to offend anyone that I care about or that you care about, or cause anyone to feel uncomfortable.

[02:00:54] But then you said something to me. You acknowledged that I probably learned a lot of those words from you, which was true because you were quite the sailor's mouth when I was a kid. But you said that you didn't realize years into your life as a businessman, that you had hurt some of your business relationships and your ability to make money by the use of that type of language. Could you explain that?

[02:01:18] Alan: Yeah, sure. In the world that I built business wise, which was a real estate world, basically, most of the things I earned financially, some with  earth-moving business that I started for around 15 years, but most of it was through real estate, when you're doing real estate business with people that are sophisticated, that have a lot of money, and I start using those words, then it makes me look like I am a little ignorant or a little stupid or a little uneducated or whatever.

[02:01:54] And it makes me feel like I interpret their view of me as being less than and not competent and not a professional. So I had to learn early on when I was doing the real estate deals that I had to really watch my tongue because of a tendency to let my tongue slip, say things. If I'm around ranchers and stuff that talk like I did, it's no big deal.

[02:02:21] But if I'm around people that I'm trying to impress or people I'm trying to get a deal done, they don't listen to me using the F word every two seconds or using all that stuff. So to me, if I kept using that, it damaged my reputation. People don't want to be around that. What I learned is most people that have quite a bit of money, they don't use those words.

[02:02:45] Most people are really educated that were my clients don't use those words. So I had to learn. I got to fit this to my audience out there and quit using those words because it was hurting me financially as a real estate broker to use that kind of vocabulary. So I still I'm not perfect. I still use them, but I really have to watch it.

[02:03:05] I pay attention more today. I'm a lot better than I used to be. I'm 100 times better than I used to be, but I still make mistakes. I don't know. To me it's like, how do I get respect from someone if I speak disrespectfully? How do I gain their trust if I say all these bad words?

[02:03:30] How do they have confidence in me if I sound like I just came out of Larmer Street? How are they going to do business with me if I'm still in that mindset? So that's what happened to me. With May, she doesn't like me to swear around her. She hardly ever swears, rarely, rarely does she swear.

[02:03:54] And so I've got to watch myself. When I do, I go, "Oh, I did it again." I got to keep tapping myself and become aware of it so I don't keep doing that. So depends on who I'm with. But I sometimes I'm with guys in AA and most of those guys are just like I was. But in the meetings I go to in Florida, they specifically say, please don't swear in the meetings.

[02:04:19] And they don't. And it's the people that go to those meetings who are generally multimillionaires. Everybody's rich that goes to them. There's no poor people there, and they don't appreciate that language. So to me, it's adapting to, I don't need to use that language. It doesn't serve me well when I do. So that's how I view it. And May doesn't like to hear it.

[02:04:43] Luke: Thanks.

[02:04:44] Alan: Does that make any sense?

[02:04:45] Luke: Yeah, it's perfect. And then I think the last thing that I want to cover here-- this is great. I think we got a lot of really good stuff that's going to be meaningful to have on record. What would be some advice about business and building wealth and having that type of security?

[02:05:15] Alan: Hard work's one of them, but it's not how hard you work. It's how smart you work. You can go out and work your ass off every day and never have any net worth, but it's always looking outside the box for new ways to incorporate more income into your life by having enough view outside your life, like being able to see a deal when it's there and take advantage of it.

[02:05:49] It's like when I was in excavating. I never made much money because I was always focused on digging holes and filling them up again. When I started doing real estate and I started saying, "Let's see. I could take this money. I could buy this property, take my  earth-moving equipment and subdivide it, and do all my own water lines, sewer lines, and roads and everything. I can expense it off of the  earth-moving account and I get capital gains when I sell the real estate." See how that works?

[02:06:16] Instead of paying ordinary income on VNS excavating, I got capital gains on Storey Enterprises, which is real estate. Or Storey Real Estate LLC. And I pay 20% or I pay 40%. What could be my choice? I think I'll take the 20.

[02:06:35] Luke: The 20 being the capital gain versus the income from the business.

[02:06:38] Alan: Versus straight ordinary income. See, that's looking outside the box and thinking how can I-- so I've always got to be thinking, how can I increase income and decrease expenses? That's what I always got to be looking at. How am I going to increase income and decrease expenses?

[02:06:55] And I have to make smart choices. Two. So for example, I got to learn what liabilities are, like houses, things like that. I got to learn what liabilities are and what assets are. I got to invest in things that are worth more tomorrow than they are today instead of investing in things I want, like motorcycles and speedboats and stuff like that, that are worth less tomorrow.

[02:07:20] When I drive a new car off the lot, I'm losing about 5 to 10 grand. Is that a smart investment? No. I'll buy one a year old. It's taking the big hit off the bat. See, I'm always thinking about stuff like that. What's the best bang for the buck? And my tendency is I like nice things.

[02:07:39] I made a bunch of money and I bought May a new Lexus. I made a bunch of money and I bought that car I've got now. This is going to probably be my last car. But then I got rid of my pickup truck because I didn't need three vehicles. Even though I could use the pickup truck, me having three cars is ridiculous.

[02:07:55] I got to pay license fees, taxes on it, and all the other crap, maintenance and whatever. So try to simplify my life down to what I need instead of what I want. I want everything, but what I really need is a lot less than what I want. So the smartest thing I ever did was probably get into real estate where I got into cash income producing properties like trailer parks.

[02:08:18] I got into those and I put a sign on my refrigerator, trailer parks in five years. I looked at that every day. Because I was developing real estate, then I'd finish a development. I'd have to go buy more land and go through that three years of crap to getting through approvals again and just eat me up financially. Eat me up mentally and emotionally.

[02:08:38] I can't do this any longer. So I said, "I got to change plans." What can I buy out there that's going to make me money every month? It's like what you're doing with your School of Style stuff. You got the idea and it's working for you. Cut all expenses of travel. You did it.

[02:08:52] You've done everything you're supposed to do, and now you're reaping the rewards for it. But you looked outside the box. That's exactly what you did. You looked outside the box and you said, "In a year or two, I'm going to be out New York. I'm going to be out of these other cities, and I'm going to quit that stuff and cut that expense out and all that because we're not making any money."

[02:09:12] We gross a million. We'd only make 50,000 or whatever. It's not how much you gross. It's how much you net that comes back into your pocket. That's the bottom line. So by investing in stuff like mini storage or mobile home parks, and as long as they cash flow and bring you a decent rate of return on your money, you're home free.

[02:09:32] You can make your money work for you where you don't have to go out and work all the time. You can go fishing 10 days a week, whatever you want to do. So it's all that. It's the mindset you put behind it. Instead of how hard you work, you work hard, but you work smart. And that's what you've done.

[02:09:50] Remember that book I gave you, Rich Dad Poor Dad? Read that book a bunch of times and pretty soon it starts sinking in. It's the same thing I did. I did mine before he wrote the book, but that's the same mindset I had to have to get there.

[02:10:04] Luke: And you've never been in debt, huh?

[02:10:06] Alan: Oh, hell yeah. I've been in debt.

[02:10:07] Luke: Oh, you have?

[02:10:08] Alan: Oh yeah.

[02:10:09] Luke: When?

[02:10:09] Alan: When I was in  earth-moving business. I was in debt for a lot of money, buying equipment and stuff. I'd be in debt 2 or $300,000.

[02:10:14] Luke: Really?

[02:10:15] Alan: Yeah.

[02:10:16] Luke: Wow.

[02:10:17] Alan: This is where working for money doesn't pay off. And to explain that to you, here's what happens when you start a construction business or any other business. Say you buy a million bucks worth of equipment. You don't have the money, so you go down and borrow-- I'll keep it small.

[02:10:35] Say you're going to get in the backhoe business. So you finance your car. You use your car. Your car's paid off. You use it for leverage for equity. You use that equity. You buy a backhoe. And then you're in business. You're in  earth-moving business because you can do trenches and put sewer lines in and water lines in and do little, minor shit around, little dirt hauling here and there.

[02:10:57] And then you get a dump truck and then you can haul the dirt from here to there. Then pretty soon you get a loader. So you can load the dump truck and dig the basements, and then you build up and you keep building up. But to do that, you got to keep borrowing money to keep it going.

[02:11:08] So say my first year maybe I made $200,000 grossed and my operating costs were probably, say,  $100,000 operating costs. So I basically gross profited or net profited $100,000. But I had to borrow $60,000 to buy the backhoe. So out of that 100, I had to take 60, pay the backhoe, pay off the loan for the backhoe. And then I got to stay around all winter long with no excavating because there's snow on the ground and work on equipment, which is a constant decrease of capital every day.

[02:11:50] Money's flowing out, buying parts and filters and stuff. Keeping guys on the payroll. Springtime comes around, I'm ready to go again. So it's a circle you get into. You borrow money, you work your butt off and you make some money, you pay your employees, you work through the winter. April 15th comes around. Guess who's beating at your door? Uncle Sam.

[02:12:14] So you got to only pay the bank back, but you got to pay Uncle Sam back for the money you made, but you never really got, but you made it on the paper. You got to pay him back. So it's a dog chasing his tail. You get stuck doing the same thing over and over. Borrowing money, paying Uncle Sam, earning money, paying back the loan, paying back Uncle Sam. You get stuck in a circle. You can't get out of it.

[02:12:35] If the economy goes south, you're screwed. If you got 2 or $300,000 in debt and your economy flattens out and there's no construction, you're dead meat. You go bankrupt. They take everything you have. So the issue is how to stay ahead and get ahead, is to invest, like you've done, and find ways to make more money in your business without having to travel.

[02:12:59] Keep the expenses down, increase the income, do what you're doing, and then pretty soon you'd be able to do it without maybe working two days a week or one day a week or whatever. The rest of it is free time. Do whatever you want to do. Do your podcast, whatever you want to do. It's learning how to make your money work for you instead of you working for money.

[02:13:21] Luke: So aside from you going into debt to buy equipment and build your businesses, you never have been one to use credit cards and spend that kind of debt, huh?

[02:13:28] Alan: No. I used credit cards my whole life, but I paid them off every month. I never gotten credit card debt. Because they hit you with 18 to 24% interest. You become a slave to your credit cards. I've had them my whole life. I've had credit cards. I have one card I use now primarily. It itemizes everything I buy and I write it off as business expense or personal expense.

[02:13:57] May puts it into QuickBooks, downloads it in there, and end of the year comes around. You shoot that information right to the account and the account looks down each side if business or pleasure. And I know how much money I made, how much tax I owe, and so forth. I can use the credit card and then I get 2% cash back for using that credit card. So for every  $100,000, I get 2,000 back. Last year I got about three grand back, 3 or $4,000 back off using that credit card.

[02:14:29] Luke: So you're actually making money off the credit card instead of it charging you?

[02:14:32] Alan: That's right. Now you're thinking. See. I don't have any credit card expense.

[02:14:39] Luke: But even when you purchased properties and you buy houses, you mostly paid for stuff cash, your real estate?

[02:14:45] Alan: No, I financed.

[02:14:46] Luke: You did?

[02:14:47] Alan: Sure. Yeah.

[02:14:48] Luke: [Inaudible].

[02:14:49] Alan: Yeah. I had to finance a little on this. Not much. 1031 exchange, that's a whole new ballgame. A 1031 exchange is where I have a piece of property, say investment property. Say I've got a motel. I take that motel and I sell it. I take the proceeds and I buy a mobile home park. See, I'm 1031. I buy the motel for a million dollars. I sell it for a million and a half. I take that money and I buy a mobile home park for a million and a half. I don't pay taxes on the half a million I made because it's a 1031 exchange.

[02:15:30] I'm exchanging one property. I'll have to pay at some point, maybe. But it's a way to transfer that money from one property to another without paying taxes on the gain. It's called a 1031 tax deferred exchange. It doesn't say taxi eliminated exchange. It says tax deferred.

[02:15:50] So if I sell the mobile home park now, I still got that half a million dollars I'll have to pay tax on. But if I don't sell a mobile home park, I'm using the government's money for as long as I own it. And that $500,000 worth $500,000 down here and real money down here, the $500,000 in 10 years is probably worth $200,000 because of inflation. See what I'm saying?

[02:16:14] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[02:16:14] Alan: So I'm paying it back 200,000 for the 500.

[02:16:17] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[02:16:17] Alan: Because inflation's eating all that up.

[02:16:19] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[02:16:22] Alan: See how that works?

[02:16:23] Luke: Yeah. So the gain value gets diminished over time because of inflation. So by the time that debt and taxes comes due, it's actually worth less.

[02:16:35] Alan: Yeah.

[02:16:36] Luke: It costs you less.

[02:16:38] Alan: Yeah. If I already decide to sell it, I don't sell them.

[02:16:40] Luke: Yeah.

[02:16:41] Alan: I don't sell them because I don't want to pay the taxes, but by the time I pay the taxes, it's going to be minimal ' because the $500,000 20 years ago is worth, in actual money, maybe $30,000 20 years later.

[02:16:56] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[02:16:57] Alan: So I'm paying all that back with $30,000. It makes sense to me.

[02:17:01] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[02:17:02] Alan: So you got to work the plan thinking outside the box again. So it's like in your business. Say, I try to get you and Andy in mobile home parks and mini storage and stuff like that. It's like when you buy into that stuff, you want something that's going to cash flow out where you're making between six and 10% a year net.

[02:17:22] After all your expenses, you make six or 10% a year. That's not too bad. And then what you get along with that is you get the appreciation of the land under it. There's zero value to that at that time. It's just blank land. And your real estate taxes are very low on unimproved land.

[02:17:43] So then you're getting 6% on your money, plus if the property doubles in value in five years, you're not only got 6%, but you got double in value. Say you paid 500 for it, sell it for a million in five years. You've made $500,000 profit plus 6% on the income.

[02:18:04] Luke: Nice.

[02:18:05] Alan: It's a good way to inventory real estate. And as things grow around it, the real estate generally goes up in value. Houses don't necessarily do that, but real estate does. Houses is liabilities. I don't invest in houses. This in here, I'll be lucky to get what I paid for it. If I get out what I paid for it 12 years ago, I'll be doing fucking good.

[02:18:25] Luke: If this house was in Hollywood, you'd be making out like a bandit. Probably would've doubled in value by now.

[02:18:31] Alan: I know it. That's the whole thing. But Grand Junction's a dead area, so I got to really be careful where-- or invest. I wouldn't invest in Grand Junction, buy a house here in Grand Junction for investment. You might make a little bit of money here and there, but you're not going to do well.

[02:18:46] But if I invest in Aspen like I did and down in Roaring Fork Valley like I did, yeah, I made a lot of money, but most of my money was made in developing real estate like Blue Lake we didn't talk about and Lions Ridge Estates, which I developed.

[02:18:59] Luke: Where's Lions Ridge?

[02:19:00] Alan: Do you know where Catherines store is?

[02:19:05] Luke: Uh-uh.

[02:19:05] Alan: Do you know where Carbondale is?

[02:19:06] Luke: Yeah.

[02:19:06] Alan: Between Carbondale and [Inaudible].

[02:19:07] Luke: Oh, okay.

[02:19:08] Alan: It's 100 acres up on the hill I developed into 15 lots and sold it. Came out really good on that.

[02:19:14] Luke: So you would buy just a big piece of raw land, then use your equipment to subdivide it into lots and then you'd sell off the lots and make a lot more money than you did buying one piece of land that wasn't divided and developed at all.

[02:19:27] Alan: You got it. So I had my own equipment, my own dozers, loaders, excavators, everything. And I would take, and I'd put the roads away in, the water, sewer lines, everything in, and gravel the roads or paving, whatever I did. And then I do have my own stuff. And I got to write that off against my income for the  earth-moving business. And I got to capital gain it when I sold a lot.

[02:19:53] Luke: And you did that in Elk Run too, in Basalt, right? Did you do that one?

[02:19:57] Alan: Yeah, I did that one. Yeah, I did that one. But that was a bad deal. That was '81, '82, '83. That's when the economy went south. We hit the market exactly the wrong time. Took us three years to get approvals. Took us a million dollars in soft cost, attorney's fees and planning. Three years to get approval. When we got approval, you couldn't give land away. So your timing's everything in that business.

[02:20:19] Luke: Right.

[02:20:20] Alan: I never would've anticipated I couldn't sell property in Roaring Fork Valley.

[02:20:24] Luke: God. Because now think about how much those properties are worth.

[02:20:27] Alan: There's 220 homes in there now. People got a great home and they've probably paid 30, $40,000 a lot back then-- is probably worth 250,000 a lot today.

[02:20:37] Luke: Mm-hmm. Just--

[02:20:37] Alan: Everybody I sold property to in those days made money. Everybody. I did Basalt Business Center East. It was a 15-space industrial park. Took me two or three years to get there. I had $300,000 in soft costs. My infrastructure costs were 160,000. That's water lines, sewer lines, curb gutter, sidewalk landscaping, blah blah blah. Was 160,000. Cost me twice as much to get approval as it did to do all the improvements.

[02:21:06] That's what government can do to you. That same subdivision, 15-lot residential subdivision, Lions Ridge, my soft costs were less than $25,000 compared to 300 in Basalt. And the one in Lions Ridge was 100 acres. The one in Basalt was six acres.

[02:21:26] Luke: Was that just because one was in one town that had tougher regulations?

[02:21:30] Alan: You got it. It was like Aspen.

[02:21:32] Luke: More bureaucracy.

[02:21:33] Alan: Yeah, tons of bureaucracy. Exactly. I would never do it again.

[02:21:38] Luke: Interesting.

[02:21:39] Alan: So that's what I've learned.

[02:21:41] Luke: Yeah. That's good. That's good stuff to add. Well, I think that brings us to the end.

[02:21:46] Alan: Sounds good.

[02:21:47] Luke: That brings us up to our current day. Thanks for sharing your story and your experience.

[02:21:54] Alan: You're welcome.

[02:21:57] Luke: All right, we're going to sign off. I love you, dad.

[02:21:58] Alan: Love you too, Luke.